


IRL And All Realities

by ozsia



Series: IRL And All Realities [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Sword Art Online
Genre: Character Death, Crossover, Depression, Eventual Romance, F/F, F/M, First Love, Good/ Matured Dudley Dursley, Life and Death situations, Light Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Light Hermione Granger Bashing, Light Ronald Weasley Bashing, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War, Wizarding World Discrimantion, implied/ referenced child abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2018-04-30 02:26:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5146871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozsia/pseuds/ozsia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he picked up Gryffindor's sword he had been young and terrified. The second time he fumbled the hilt, he had still been young and he had still been terrified. The third time? He was not much older and no more prepared for the world he had just entered, nor for the enemy he will face in order to win this twisted game of life and death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 'Long Time, Huh,  Big D?'

The doorbell rung on a Sunday afternoon, jolting Dudley from his IT textbook that he reluctantly marked his place by bending a dog ear on the top of his page. He was the only one in the house, his parents having left early that morning and he didn’t expect them back until later that evening. It was a relatively sleepy day which he’d been using to study, telly on low as he let his mind absorb the information in front him. 

He hadn’t moved in hours, Dudley was too concentrated first on a documentary then his phone before finally settling into his book, slowly meddling into the settee as time ticked by. Now, he had to move. Closing his book, he left it balancing on the arm of the settee before absently stretching out the kinks that had knotted in his inactivity, before rising from his moulded cushion.

He yawned loudly as he reluctantly rose from his crosslegged position against the extra pillows, and started down the hallway as soon as he found his feet. Dudley’s eyes were misty from a late night spent trying to find the fault in his PC as he ignored Piers’ excessive text messages, while on Discord with another friend, Scott, who he’d met at secondary school. Git was a good laugh but he’d only gotten a few hours sleep before he had to wake up for breakfast.

Dudley paid little attention in where he was heading as he stumbled past the cupboard under the stairs which was piled high with cleaning products and the like. There was no second bedroom either, just a guest room that Aunt Marge had stayed in a few times since the move. No Harry. No cheeky attitude or sarcastic comments thinly guised as compliance. No screaming in the middle of the night from terrors he couldn’t fight. No magic. It left the whole house feeling…empty sometimes, when Dudley stopped to notice. It lingered in the back of his mind, like the shadows cast from candle light. 

‘I’m coming,’ Dudley grunts when the doorbell rings again. ‘I’m coming.’

Nearing the door, he hesitates, his toughened fingers skimming over the security chain. Shaking his head, he silently tells himself not to be ridiculous. It was almost tradition at this point but wizards wouldn’t bother with the bell; if they even knew what it was to begin with. They’d just blast it open and Dudley would already be dead.

Dudley twisted the key to unlock the bolt, probably with more force than necessary as the glass panels rattled. His temper had cooled since he’d started truly focusing boxing and began listening to his new coach, but the embers were still there for small outbursts he couldn’t quite smoother. Thoughts of that world were enough to start the itch as irritation bubbled in his stomach, with the thoughts of his cousin being pulled from his bed in the middle of the night.

Shaking his free hand through his hair, he pulled the door towards him as he leant against the wall casually. Dudley peered out of the angle he’d created, cautious still. ‘Yeah? What -’ he stopped and nearly swallowed his tongue when his eyes finally took note of the two figures outside his door. He’d expected someone trying to flog sun-panels or a Jehovah’s Witnesses, so a salesperson.

He took in the two men standing in front of him, and barely noticed how they flinched when he flung the door further open - didn’t care when it slammed against the inside wall. Dudley straightened, standing to his full height. The one furtherest away was tall and black, wearing robes but Dudley dismissed him - the bone he wanted to pick notwithstanding, as the one in front - the one in front…

‘…Harry?’ Dudley asks, barely believing it as he stared wide-eyed at his cousin whose head was bowed, hair hanging low over his face as he presented the stance of someone who’d gone three rounds with the Hulk, and only had bruised pride to show for it.

Mum and Dad didn’t talk about Harry past hisses of way and death, vague insults of being made to move for their safety. They’d never forgiven being uprooted; Dad had had to get another job which didn’t pay half as well, and Mum had lost her place in the community. No one around them knew Harry anymore and Dudley didn’t talk to anyone who did. 

‘Yeah…’ Harry responds, his expression wavering like his facial muscles were no longer used to accommodating anything beyond “bleak”. He appeared almost vulnerable, like the core that’d made him so strong had been ripped from him. ’Long time, huh, Big D?’ 

Dudley’s stomach sits inside him like led and his chest tightens. His cousin was sixteen-years-old now but he looked like men did when they were eighty and had seen it all, and only lived to tell about it by the skin of their teeth and found there was nothing left to say. Harry was more drawn and tired than Dudley has ever experienced from him, struggling just to keep his head lifted.

Dudley had seen Harry through almost four years of that school and everything that that had entailed. Harry’s moods had gone from one extreme to another depending on the term, but even at his worst, he’d always been…ready for it. Like even if things were down right terrible, painful and it couldn’t possibly get worse that he’d get through it because that was life, and _living_ in the fight.

Now…now there was no fight. Dudley struggled to find much _life_ either in Harry’s numb features or his worn form. ‘What…’ Dudley stuttered as he started to burn. ‘What the fuck happened?!’ he demanded as his narrowed eyes flickered up to the man who was too old to be depending on _kids_. It was an accusation, and the man’s pained grimace said he’d heard it loud and clear.

‘Big D,’ Harry says placatingly. ‘Sorry to have tracked you down like this -’

‘Harry,’ Dudley interrupts as he holds onto his sense of calm by a thread. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

‘We - I am sorry for disturbing you, Mister Dursley.’ The man steps in which only serves to anger Dudley than appease him. 

‘Oh fuck off you asshat,’ Dudley spits as he squeezes his eyes shut before they open again and blaze. He half hopes to incinerate the man but he stays stubbornly solid and unburnt. ‘That isn’t what this is about. You spirited my idiot cousin away and we don’t hear shit from you until we’re told we got to move,’ he hisses with emotion that he’d kept pent up. ‘And now you’re here and you bring him back looking like _that?’_

He jerks a thumb in Harry’s direction and the man’s lips turn further downward. Harry’s eyes - dim with something in them looking broken - shut, in a terribly pained self-acknowledgement that _yeah. I’m a horrible, horrible mess right now._

‘The Ministry fell months after Harry joined the Order and by that point it as deemed too dangerous to be going into Muggle Britain,’ the man says lowly but seriously. He’s not afraid to meet Dudley head on which was - something, he supposed. ‘Thanks to Harry’s efforts -’

‘Yeah, what _else_ is new?’ Dudley mutters sneeringly. He knew shit about what’s happened but that sounded about right.

‘The…conflict has been resolved. However, due to recent events Harry has become a person of interest to unsavoury characters, and he needs a place to stay while they are apprehended.’ 

The man’s eyes flicker to Harry whose hands are picking at his threadbare sleeves. ‘We understand that this may not -’

‘Stop,’ Dudley demands through his teeth. If he didn’t want to keep his hands free he’d cross his arms if only to do something with this tension. ‘I get what you must think of us but the last time I saw Harry he’d just finished saving my life. He’s my fucking cousin, so if you need to leave him with someone, then give him to me.’ 

Dudley hears Harry sharp intake of breath and it only serves to increase the guilt he’d been carrying over how he’d behaved; how he’d treated Harry. He doesn’t deserve to claim Harry as blood, he knows that but he’s desperately wanted to make amends and if Harry needed somewhere to lay low, then that’s what Dudley would give him. 

‘I…appreciate your co-operation but is your mother or father in?’ The man’s face is rigid as he looks over Dudley’s shoulder like his parents would just pop out of thin air. Maybe that was a thing of wizards but it wasn’t here. ‘I don’t have a lot of time and I need to speak with them about Harry’s arrangements -’

‘Maybe you should have thought about that before you took him!’ Dudley snaps defensively. He grabs hold of the plastic doorframe, vaguely hearing how it groaned under him his grip. ‘They’re not in. I’ll talk to them when they get back.’ 

The man’s dark eyes look at him rather pointedly. ‘I don’t think that would be wise,’ he denies. ‘Not to be rude but I’ve heard about Harry’s treatment here -‘

‘Kingsley,’ Harry hisses, a deep discomfort settling on him like an added weight to his back. And, yeah. They had that coming. That ginger lot knew what had been going well enough behind closed doors, so no doubt it was spread around if Harry, himself, didn’t mention it.

Even so.

‘A bit rich coming from you,’ Dudley comments with some bite. The man - Kingsley, looks back to him and he itches to punch the guy. His hands ache with the force of keeping them curled to his sides, with the added reminder that if someone witnesses him picking a street-fight then he’d get kicked from his gym. ‘Yeah, we were crappy to him but don’t think you’ve been any better. Harry’s good - he’s kind. He’s a bloody pushover.’ 

The best kind of push over. Harry had saved him after Dudley had punched him in the face and that - that made him a better person than most. At primary school too though, he’d always speak up for people who wouldn’t do it for themselves. He’d protect the little guy despite being the smallest out of everyone their age. 

Harry was still small and Dudley could tell he was still good. 

‘Mister Dursley -‘

‘When you took him, I thought he’d end up dying for you,’ he whispers because despite how little they had been told of the situation Mum had dropped hints about the terrorism, about “freaks targeting good, honest people”. That was enough for Dudley to get it, kind of. ‘I thought we’d get another stupid bird flying through the window with the news that, _yeah,_ we had one more martyr in the family.’

(She hadn’t spoken about that, quite as much but it wasn’t hard to piece together. Not with Mum and Harry both unwittingly contributing to the mental gymnastics Dudley had been performing trying to work it all out.)

Kingsley seems to have paled, his lips pursed as he looks down at Dudley. ‘Looks like you gave it your best.’ Without his consent, Kingsley breaks from Dudley’s gaze to look at Harry. Harry who seems to still be wearing clothes a size or two too big, who’s short and hurt and out in the cold. 

‘…Harry?’ Kingsley says in askance instead, wrong-footed and just a bit ill. 

‘It’s alright,’ Harry reassures in a way that seemed so fatigued it could be anything but.

Kingsley face sort of - crumbles and he waits for a second but nothing else is forthcoming from Harry, and he turns back to Dudley. ‘Then, Mister Dursley -‘ 

‘Dudley,’ he corrects.

‘…Dudley. I’ll leave Harry to you. If you have any problems -‘

‘Harry will handle it,’ Dudley cuts in viciously. This Kingsley bloke could be of the good sort, too but he doesn’t have an awful lot of patience for him. ‘Unless you’re talking about my parents. Then, sure. Leave it to me.’

Dudley deliberately misinterpreted that, but he can’t help but think it’s nothing short of what they deserve. If they wanted to be reliable then they’re much too late. Harry’s been looking after himself for years, and nothing they have ever done has helped with his parents attitude towards Harry, in fact the opposite may be true. 

Harry shudders a breath. ‘I’ll…good luck, with catching them,’ he says falteringly, tiredly. 

‘Keep your wand close,’ Kingsley advises as the man reaches inside his robes and pulls out a pouch. Harry takes it with a nod of thanks, fingers tangling in the long cords holding the bag closed. He allows it to hang without much care against his side. 

‘Right.’ Harry’s smile is small and flat, wry as he gazes off to the side. The atmosphere is awkward and strange between the two wizards. Dudley wonders what’s happened. ‘See you when I see you, then.’ Which is as uncommitted and distrustful as his cousin gets with people whom he has a lot expectation for. Dudley had seen Harry direct dithering and vague statements towards teachers and neighbours, people who he’d recognised as fair-weathered or unbothered. As _something._

‘The Portkey…’ Kingly hedges.

‘Yeah, “constant vigilance”,’ Harry’s smile fades and his voice is soft with something mourning. ‘I know.’

Enough of this.

Dudley reaches out a hand to Harry and wonders if it’s too soon, as Harry recoils from it before he focuses in. Green eyes blink at the offering for a second, head tilted in bafflement until he slowly takes it. Dudley pulls his cousin over the doorstep and into the house. ‘Wait - Mister Dursley,’ Kingsley startles forward, just a bit as Dudley goes to shut the door. ‘We did our best, you know -’

‘Well, whoopee-do.’ Dudley feels his lips curling in disgust and swallows down the crueller of what is burning his tongue like acid. He’s not even sure what Kingsley was reaching for with that, the man’d made no effort in hiding his contempt. ‘…so did we.’ 

Well, if this “Kingsley” was looking for something like absolution from what remained of Harry’s family, he was all out of luck. 

It was difficult for Dudley to believe that they was anything but what they were, especially once Harry was gone and he started to realise how fucked up everything had been. There was no real excuse for what’d happened but he couldn’t quite grasp that his parents were - evil, or whatever. His mum had barely been married two years, had just started a family when she’d found a baby on her doorstep, a baby from a sister she’d been at odds with. That wasn’t _fair._ Placing that sort of responsibility on someone wasn’t fair.

Kingsley’s face stutters. ‘Mister Dursley -’

‘Thanks for reuniting us,’ Dudley says in ways of goodbye as he shuts the door. His heart is beating weirdly in his chest as he twists the key and deadbolts the door. It’d do little if the wizard wanted to get in but it was the principle of the thing.

(The words intolerant and ignorant were - true, but people were stupid when they were afraid. And he still remembers his mum’s face at breakfast the morning after Harry had left. ‘ _I knew it would happen, you know,_ ’ she’d said when it was just the two of them, not long after dad had left for work. ‘ _They take_ everything _.’_ )

‘…Big D?’ Harry says uncertainly, like the words themselves were unfamiliar when Harry had been taunting him with them since they were kids - younger. Dudley turns to him and his stomach twists when he sees how Harry is standing in the entry, dwarfed by his surroundings.

Dudley takes a breath. ‘Would you like some tea?’ he asks, feeling strange and out of place in a house only he knew.

Harry blinks. This must be twice as off for him than it was Dudley. ‘…alright,’ he agrees and allows to be led through into the kitchen though Dudley can’t help but notice how he stays just a step behind Dudley, careful not to let him out of sight or how Harry edges away from the doors.

His heart clenches when he sees Harry’s uneven footsteps, how his cousin - always so spry and quick, limps. His left leg doesn’t carry his weight properly, instead his knee gave way a little each time he brought that side forward.

The kitchen has the dining room attached and Dudley in passing pulls Harry out a chair - quickly, _please sit down,_ and tries to be casual as he goes to the kettle to make them both something for the nervous thirst. Dudley had drunk a bit when he was younger, but cut that off at the head when he’d stopped being an _idiot._ Now, he feels like they both probably needed something stronger. 

‘Make yourself at home,’ Dudley says as the kettle, partially empty, boils quickly as he handles his mum’s fine china. He listens to Harry’s scuffling feet and the sound of the chair as he pulls it up to the table.

‘Never thought I’d hear you saying that to me,’ Harry comments sardonically. Dudley can feel his gaze, heavy as it is. It’s not quite judgement, Harry never was that as he took people for how they were (whether he liked you or not, that was another matter entirely). Just daring, always poking people, Harry was. 

Dudley steels himself to look back while fishing out the Earl Grey teabags from the cupboard. ‘Yeah, well.’ He fumbles awkwardly, as he lips desperately keep him from forming the apology that’s needed here. ‘People change.’ 

Maybe Harry hears it anyway, as his face seems to settle into something less sharp. ‘…they do,’ he agrees quietly. 

‘Milk?’ Dudley enquires even if just for something to say when the kettle stops rumbling, the lever flicking back up in another indication that it’s finished. He realises that he has no idea how his cousin takes his tea, or his food preferences in general. Shame is not a new feeling, it greets him often.

‘Yes, please.’ Dudley’s nose wrinkles but he did ask.

Tea made, he carries it over and places the teacup and saucer in front of Harry. His own is left in the centre as he scouts out the biscuits. He tries to avoid eating a lot of the sweets his mum buys, but every now and then is fine with his exercise regime.

The biscuit tin is really an old Quality Street box that had been repurposed from a Christmas long gone. Harry had never had any of those either. Dudley brings that over too and after he takes a seat, pulls open the lid. Pale gold shortbread meet his gaze. He can practically smell the sugar as he slides the tin into the middle of the table, swapping it for his teacup which he drags in front of him. 

‘So…’ Dudley starts as he settles fully into his chair on the opposite side of the table from Harry’s. Honestly, he’d thought about what he’d say to his cousin if he ever returned, but that had always got him onto the whole _“if,”_ and the uncertainty, until he stopped thinking about it. Now, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

‘So,’ Harry sighs before he tries a smile again. It isn’t quite fully formed. ‘…you’re looking good.’

_You’re not,_ Dudley thinks but swallows it before he can say it. ‘Well, thanks,’ he replies, taking the better part of valour. A bit uncomfortably. He probably _did_ look different to Harry. Less “clinically obese” as his GP would put, with an approving nod at his new healthy weight. 'Finally started to focus on something.’

Harry’s gaze slides from Dudley’s face to his torso and his shoulders. ‘Boxing?’ 

‘Yeah, well. I’m good at it.’ He hadn’t really tried, before - not until he’d joined his new gym. He’d won matches but that had little to do with skill and was mostly down to his size; his fat. And the entrance level he’d been fighting on. His new coach wouldn’t have Dudley just coasting by. ‘It’s - a hobby, I guess. It’s not what I want to do for a job or anything, but…it’s good. Helps me - to not be as much of a jerk.’ 

‘…seems to be working,’ Harry states in actual surprise, words strung together in that overly blunt way of his, that’d always caused so much havoc. He looks to his tea and tentatively raises it to his lips. He sips slow, carefully, before he’s lowering the cup back onto the saucer. ‘I’m - this isn’t what I was expecting.’ 

‘Well, I had to grow up eventually,’ Dudley says without offence. He deserves this, this scepticism. The fact that Harry had come here at all, even as a last resort, was nothing short of a miracle. 

‘Still.’ Harry shrugs slightly and silence settles between them. They’d never spoken at length before - or at all. Dudley would taunt and bully, Harry would fire back quips but otherwise stick to himself. They hadn’t _talked._ Dudley couldn’t find where to start.

Dudley’s phone buzzes in his pocket, on reflex he pulls it out and stares uncomprehendingly at the screen. 

 

> _**Wiz Kid**    now_
> 
> __LOL soz u sure u didn’t mix u power cables up mate?_ _

Dudley frowns in thought as he starts to contemplate the message but mentally slaps himself when he starts thinking about his computer, because it _so_ wasn’t a priority right now. He presses the lock button and throws the phone onto the table and tries to refocus.

‘Sorry, a friend’s been trying to help me with a problem I’ve been having,’ he explains when he finds Harry examines his phone with an intensity it doesn’t deserve.

‘Oh?’ Harry says noncommittally. ‘Anyone I’d know?’

‘Fuck no.’ Dudley snorts much to Harry’s shock if his loosened jaw says anything. ‘I mean, I tried but. Like I said, I had to grow up eventually.’

‘And they didn’t?’ Harry guesses with that intuition of his. Or from simply knowing them, really it could be a little of both. It wasn’t like any of Dudley’s friends at the time had made a good impression on Harry.

‘Yeah,’ Dudley agrees. _Among other things._ His old friends had been a whole lot of trouble, and he was probably really fucking lucky to have moved when he did. It saved him from more than just wizards.

‘What problem?’ Harry asks after a moment.

‘Sorry?’

‘What problem’s your friend helping you with?’ Harry elaborates.

‘Oh,’ Dudley relaxes even if he is confused with Harry’s interest. ‘Oh, well I started building myself a computer over the summer hols but I can’t get it to start. Scott’s good with computers, he was in my IT class. Er, in secondary school. It was my elective.’

‘IT?’

‘You know -’ Dudley was about to begin but it dawns him then, that Harry probably wouldn’t. ‘Remember, it was called ICT in primary?’

Harry blinks. ‘Huh…yeah, it’s - been awhile,’ he laments as he turns the cup in its saucer seeming to barely register the screeching noise it produces. ‘Honestly, I…haven’t been gone for…well. Even just looking at the house, things seems to have changed.’

‘Technology’s been advancing quickly,’ Dudley states in the knowledge of how quickly something will become outdated and need replacements or updates. It would be annoying if it wasn’t so exciting.

‘…I suppose it has.’ Harry’s agreement is disconnected, eyes glancing back to Dudley’s phone which was a model Dudley now realises Harry wouldn’t have been able to recognise.

‘…you’ve been out of the loop for too long,’ Dudley announces to try and keep at bay the melancholy. ‘Well, I can help you with that, reintroducing you to the internet’s gonna be fun. Getting you in co-op once I get you into gaming will be even _better.’_

‘…your parents,’ Harry starts haltering, seeming to take whatever Dudley babbles as par for the course. Dudley allows the topic to be shunted off to the side, understanding that it wasn’t quite the right time.‘I don’t know how long I’ll need to stay but, things were left on a… well.’

‘You can stay,’ Dudley says though he knows Mum and Dad will be less than thrilled to see Harry again. He’d put his foot down. ’I said I’d take care of it and I will, but…’

‘But, why am I back?’ Harry finishes with a dry grin.

‘Yeah.’ Dudley nods. ‘Mind telling me about that?’

Though Harry had prompted this, he still tenses but Dudley can be patient and absently drinks his tea. ‘Mum and Dad won’t be back till later. Dad had this function for work. So…’ he says when Harry pauses for a bit too long, hoping that’d help.

‘Ah, right.’ Harry nods and seems to steel himself. ‘Do you…remember that tournament I was in?’ he asks as his hands tighten around his cup. And yeah, that tournament had caused nothing but grief. He still remembered Harry’s nightmares, his voice clear and tormented as he called out for someone. 

‘Yeah, sort of.’ Dudley didn’t really want to give an definite response because they didn’t really talk, magic was a no-go. Saying the _word_ “magic” would get Harry a bollocking. In all honesty, Dudley knew very little about Harry’s life bar whispers and conclusions he’d made himself.

‘…the Triwizard Tournament is this contest with the three biggest schools in Europe. I got entered by someone trying to kill me. It’s…dangerous, and had a age limit so it caused a huge fuss but I still had to compete,’ Harry explained, obviously hearing Dudley’s uncertainty but Dudley’s stuck on the _trying to kill me_ part. ‘In the last trial, I was tied in first with Cedric…’

Dudley recognises that name and when Harry pauses to take a breath, he knows that this can’t be good. ‘We got, er… _transported_ to a graveyard.’

‘…a graveyard?’ Dudley says.

A dark smile tilts Harry’s lips and he briefly looks up at Dudley. ‘The tournament had been used as a - a ploy. Wormtail was there, with Voldemort. Cedric was - killed and I…I was used to bring Voldemort back.’

‘Hold on,’ Dudley holds up his hands. He needed a second, something had gotten lost in translation. ‘I thought that that Volde-mort guy was the one who…you know.’ He taps his own bare forehead, unable to say anymore.

‘That’s the one,’ Harry confirms as he unwraps a hand away from his tea long enough to self-consciously touch his own head. He unsettles his fringe long enough for Dudley to glimpse the scar he’d grown up so silently intrigued by.

That answer does not help his confusion, however. ‘But…Mum said that he was - dead,’ Dudley stutters. He was already on edge since this wasn’t a good subject to be on. He was waiting for when he overstep that line of Harry’s temper.

‘He was defeated, not killed,’ Harry corrects before he huffs a sigh. There is fatigue in ever line of his slumped over body. His eyes flicker shut for a moment and he appears to be rebalancing himself before he starts over. He frees his hands, sliding his drink further away and pushes his hair back; out of his face, in an effort to energise.

‘Sorry, I…forget how little you’d know with how much of my life seems to be - broadcasted, I just, sort of _expect_ people to at this point,’ Harry says in exhaustion as his hair falls back around his face. It was a lot longer than it had been before he’d left; less messy with the added weight from its length.

‘So, Voldemort…?’

Harry rubs his hands along his face. ‘The thing you have to understand about the Wizarding World, or at least in Britain is that it’s…well, racist. Blood is really important there. Being a Pureblood, or - that is, being born from magical parents and not muggles - non-magicals, is really important. Voldemort wanted to get rid of “dirty blood”.’

‘…er, this is starting to feel very “aryan race”,’ Dudley comments uncomfortably.

‘Yeah,’ Harry snorts because he’d at least been around for primary school. ‘He started a war. A lot of people were dying, from both sides, when a prophecy was made. It said that there was a child that could defeat the Dark Lord, born from parents that had stood against him. My parents and the Longbottom’s - who fit that _really_ loose description, went into hiding.’

The inclusion of a prophecy made Dudley think of the _Lord Of Thing Rings,_ but Dudley nodded his understanding anyway. ‘If you were in hiding then what happened?’

Harry rolled his shoulders as his gaze slumped to his cooling tea. ‘The spell my parents used to hide in their cottage was a Charm that made their location undetectable,’ Harry says. ‘It made Godric’s Hollow vanish for everyone who wasn’t told where it was.’

‘Okay…?’ Dudley prompts because that just leads to more questions.

‘The Charm, the way it works - you need a Secret Keeper to remember where it is; who can share the location. My dad’s friend, Peter, got chosen.’ Harry takes a breath. ‘Unfortunately, _Peter_ was the “Wormtail” I mentioned early. He was a Death Eater - er, on Voldemort’s side. He sold us out. So, Voldemort went to Godric’s Hollow while he sent others to - _dispose_ of the Longbottom’s.’

Harry swallows while his finger follows a circular coffee stain printed into the table. ‘You might’ve picked up on this, though - Aunt Petunia won’t know, but…I remember that night.’ Dudley’s breath hitches and he feels his spine straighten like he’d just been given an electrical shock. ‘My dad went down first. He didn’t have his wand on him. Why would he? He felt save. His friend was meant to be _protecting_ us. He…told mum to take me and run. She tried to barricade the nursery, but…’

Harry kisses his teeth and struggles to swallow. ‘Her last words were pleading for my life.’

‘Harry,’ Dudley gasps in shock, feeling very unequipped on how to handle this . He - he wasn’t _good_ at comfort, even now, when he’d tried so hard to get better. ‘Harry -'

‘Then - after Voldemort killed her too, he turned his wand on me.’ Harry’s fingers lightly part his fringe. He doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe he’s ignoring Dudley’s attempts at saying, _it was fine. No, you don’t have to go into this part. You don’t have to relive this._ ‘I got the scar when his Curse rebounded back onto him. The - Killing Curse isn’t… but, my mum’s death acted as a sacrifice, maybe, and I lived.’

‘It’s ironic. If he’d shown any of us mercy…but then I guess that was beyond him at that point,’ Harry utters to himself. ‘Sorry, anyway, the spell rebounds and he’s defeated.’

‘I…that doesn’t really,’ Dudley stutters as he makes vague gestures with his hands.

‘His body died that night but he’d already thought of a counter measure, to make sure that he…couldn’t die so easily.’ Harry’s lips sneer and it tells Dudley how repugnant Harry finds it. ‘It ensures the second war.’

‘So, what was the counter measure?’

Harry’s eyes sharpen and it’s…almost like before he left. ‘Why do you think murder is so awful, Big D?’ Harry questions like he wasn’t repressing fury just by having to ask. ‘In magic, it’s because you’re taking something precious; you’re _stealing_ someone’s fate. You literally mark your soul doing it.’

Dudley is starting to feel cold, like someone is brushing their fingers down his spine.‘Mark it?’

‘Killing someone in cold blood splinters your soul, you leave something with them,’ Harry states. ‘As you’ve damn someone, you yourself will be damned. In…Dark Magic, some can use that to deliberately split their soul. Voldemort did to anchor himself to life.’

‘You - you can _do_ that?’ Disgust stirs with fear, He’s not religious though he’s spent most of his childhood being forced to church on Sunday. The knowledge of that though is - it’s _repulsive._ ‘Is that a - a common thing? Because -’

‘It’s _Dark Magic!’_ Harry snaps with a snarl. Dudley can feel the hairs on his neck stand up and he doesn’t need to guess what’s causing it. ‘That knowledge is all but unknown because it’s _forbidden!’_

Ah. Temper like a roaring fire or a burning lion, Dudley had _not_ missed this as he raises his hands. ‘I - Harry, I wasn’t trying to imply anything,’ he says because he may not know how his cousin takes his tea, he knows that his cousin wouldn’t do that. ‘The amount I know about…magic, is about the same as _you_ know about technology.’ He holds up his phone and ignores how his screen lights up at the motion. Harry had stared at it in confusion when he’d seen it because the last he’d acknowledge a mobile, flip phones were far more common in the area. Or it was with the people they were around, as hard-to-do as a lot of them were.

The fire is quick to burn out but it still leaves rubble in its wake. ‘Sorry,’ Harry whispers.

‘No, it’s fine,’ Dudley is quick to reassure. He hates how tired Harry is, his cousin had always had energy to spare even if it was only put into wit and sarcasm. ‘This has been…really _real_ for you. I get that.’

A slow, plained smile draws itself with a shaky hand upon Harry’s lips, but it doesn’t meet his eyes which remain brittle. ‘Okay - okay, so. He splits his soul seven times and seals it into seven containers.’

Dudley swallows. ‘Right.’

‘So on that night, when the Killing Curse rebounds and destroys his body, Voldemort’s safe guard keeps his soul tied here but everyone thinks been offed by a baby.’ The derision on Harry’s face was so strong Dudley could almost taste it. ‘Fast forward eleven years of racial tensions and shitty leadership from the Ministry, I return to Wizard Britain and so has Voldemort. His attempts don’t stick then until the tournament was a success. Sometimes, I think we never stood a chance. Cedric’s feet had barely touched the ground when he was killed.’

Dudley closes his eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Harry says like he doesn’t remember scream _shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about,_ at Dudley in a playground he’d long grown out of after jeers and taunts of _calling for your boyfriend, freak?_ ‘I was taken out afterwards. It was…insultingly easy for Wormtail to down me. They…’

‘It’s…okay. Take your time.’ Dudley doesn’t really…know what to do with this. Harry - Harry had never allowed himself to become emotional around them before, and Dudley hadn’t even known someone who’d suffered something like a car accident. This was beyond him.

‘My blood. They used my blood in the ceremony to bring him back. It…created a body for him,’ Harry says. And - that sounded cultish, like something he’d heard of in the news. Only this had had _real_ results other than peoples’ deaths.

‘That’s why you were such a mess.’ Dudley didn’t remember the hols very well - not the time surrounding getting attacked by those _things_ but, he recalled bits and pieces. Like how Harry had walked around the house like a zombie, prone to outbursts once confronted. Like an agitated bear with a thorn in its paw.

‘No one believed me. Our Minster at the time - Fudge, he said I was delusional. An attention seeking boy. The next edition of the _Daily Prophet_ was speculating if the Killing Curse didn’t…mess me up. Said I was obviously disturbed…’

‘What?’ Dudley gasps. Surely it wasn’t that hard to believe. They lived in a _magical_ world with _magic._

Harry huffs a laugh at his reaction. ‘That’s how Privet Drive got a visit from those Dementors. People were trying to shut me up. But…you got caught up in that, sorry.’

‘The…Dementors?’ The word sounded like something one of his old friends would call someone with a learning disability.

‘The - the creatures that attacked you,’ Harry explains uneasily because Dudley’s mind had been muddled and he hadn’t been able to explain to his parents, what’d happened. That it hadn’t been Harry - or his fault, before they were blaming him while Dudley was still trying to find his voice.

Dudley’s mouth falls open. ‘Is…that why you left?’

‘No.’ Harry shakes his head. ‘With the Ministry denying Voldemort’s return the Dark - his side, were in a good position to cause chaos and grow stronger. It was…absolute hell.’ Harry’s gaze has lost it’s focus. With chills running through his body, Dudley wonders what it is Harry’s sees.

‘What did that have to do with you?’ Harry had been _fourteen,_ for goodness sake.

His voice seems to startle Harry away from where ever it was that Harry had gone to, but he responds with a dull voice. ‘The Light were losing traction and supporters. There were attacks, people were going missing,’ he lists drolly so unlike the Harry Dudley had known, who’d have been ablaze with sympathy and fury for those responsible.

‘The night I left, it was to receive training with Mad Eye, a…wizard policeman.’

‘You were _fourteen!’_ Dudley feels the need to repeat.

Harry barely twitched but met his temper coolly. ‘It hadn’t mattered. There was an impending war. Children would be in the line of fire anyway - heck, they already had been.’

‘You -'

‘Dumbledore was desperate. People were dying. The Light was losing. He was concerned that if he didn’t act quickly enough there’d be no chance of recovery.’ The skin under his eyes clench and his mouth pulls further downward. ‘My “childhood” officially ended with my induction into the Order.’

The thing that was depressing - and not just the whole thing - was that it was like Harry was just dictating facts. ‘What did they do to you?’ he whispers.

Harry’s grin then is caustic and gestures to himself in a self-deprecating manner. '…I spent a year in isolation, to train. Didn’t get much news from the outside; I think Dumbledore was scared I’d do something stupid, if I’d known how far things were deteriorating stuck beating the crap out of practice dummies.’

‘Isolation?’ Dudley repeats. ‘What about those friends of yours?’ There’d been a girl he’d heard about more than he’d seen, but there were a whole bunch of gingers that seemed to be looking out for Harry.

‘What about them?’

 _Okay_. So, something was wrong there.

‘What happened, Harry?’

Instead of answering, Harry reaches out for his tea and with a trembling hand, lifts it to his mouth. He spent a while nervously sipping. It was just as well that he drunk so much, as when he lowered the cup again, the cold liquid sloshed around the sides with the degree that he’d tilted it.

‘I got a few messages from them at the beginning,’ Harry says slowly. ‘But it got…complicated the more months that went by and I was still in training. When I was eventually deemed ready to be let loose, a lot of the people we’d known were - dead. They couldn’t understand why I hadn’t come sooner and at the Battle of Hogwarts, the image of me swinging around Gryffindor’s sword after getting hit with another Killing Curse…well, that’d been enough for them.’

‘…I don’t understand,’ Dudley finally admits in utter confusion.

Harry might’ve tried to smile. ‘I let them down,’ he replies. ‘And then I scared them.’

Dudley leant forward as he stabbed the table with his index finger. ‘Let me get this straight, you defeat this megalomanic for them during a _war,_ a fucking _war_ _-_ the second at that - and they get all shifty about how you do it?’ Dudley’s jaw may be hanging but he thought little of it.

‘Dumbledore hadn’t been too impressed either,’ Harry comments. ‘Looked at me like I’d run _him_ through the sword and not, well. I’m lucky I wasn’t arrested. I think…that if Kingsley hadn’t been appointed Minister, that I might’ve been.’

Dudley can feel himself gapping proper now. ‘What sort of _bullshit -’_

Harry laughs like he hadn’t just told Dudley how’d basically won a war and was nearly _arrested_ for it. ‘It’s a different world, Big D. Physical violence isn’t…seen in a good light.’

‘Is…’ Dudley’s not sure how to phrase this, but he figures that honesty will be best. ‘Is that why you’re back? Because they don’t…’

‘…no,’ Harry replies eventually and not at all that certain either. ‘A lot of the Death Eaters escaped from the battle. The Order brought me here to - get me out of the way, I suppose. Kingsley…feels like he owes me but I know he doesn’t approve either. They don’t - trust me.’

Looking at Harry, used and pushed off to the side and deserving of so much better, Dudley wants to fix things. ‘I’m sorry,’ Dudley says.

‘What?’ Harry blinks, looking up from the table to meet Dudley in the eyes, in a fashion that felt new to both of them. New but not bad.

‘I’m sorry. I - I know they’re just words and that they don’t really make anything better, but I am. It shouldn’t have taken a near death experience, and you to leave for me to get over myself,’ he apologises and tries not to feel embarrassed by it. Talking about feelings and admitting when you’ve done wrong - there was nothing to feel embarrassed by. ’I want, I mean. What I want doesn’t really matter, but I think it’d be…nice, if we could -’

‘Dudley,’ Harry addresses clearly and Dudley feels his heart give one big thump. Harry hadn’t called him by his name since “Big D” had come into play. ‘I’d like that too.’


	2. Link Start into Madness

Mum had screamed when she gotten back late in the evening and walked into the kitchen after announcing their arrival, only to be faced with Harry who was bent over Dudley’s phone. He’d been showing his cousin its features for hours as Harry wasn’t used to the complexity nor its advancements, but was quiet and agreeable to learning how to work the device. It’d been a firstfor him, regardless. He hadn’t been able to use any electronics in the house before. But Mum’d screamed and Dad had turned an alarming shaped of purple.

‘What is - is that _freak_ doing here?!’ Mum demanded, pale and shaken as she trembled in her high heels, her neck gaunt as it strained.

‘ _Boy,’_ Dad growled as his voice rumbled threateningly but they were both frozen in the doorway, still and seeming to wait for something to shatter the standoff.

Harry wasn’t emendable. In fact, he barely blinked at them. Trepidation, perhaps had solidified his muscles but his face was lacklustre, deadpanned. ‘Harry needs to be away from them for awhile, so he’ll be staying here,’ Dudley explains lowly, like there were animals in the room he didn’t want to unsettle.

‘What?!’ Dad demands before vehemently shaking for head. ‘No! Absolutely not -!’

‘One of his lot brought him here. They _know_ that I said he could, Dad.’ Dudley froze as soon as the words had exited his mouth but he wanted to play up the lesser of his evils. Dad wouldn’t care that Harry may not have anywhere else to go, or that there were some very bad people who wanted to some very _real_ damage to him.

Dad glares and it is sharp, angry and Dudley hates every narrow, uncaring edge. ‘What’ve you been filling my son’s head with, freak?!’ he yells hoarsely, lips pulled back in a sneer. Mum is awfully silent as she continues stares at them blankly.

‘Nothing that he didn’t want in there,’ Harry responds, nearly snarky if it wasn’t so flat. Since that first outburst during their earlier conversation on Voldemort’s soul splitting escapades, Harry had been polite but impassive. It was…really unnatural.

‘ _Boy -’_

‘Is he dead?’ Mum interrupts softly but she might as well have used a knife. It brings Dad up short as he glances sideways at her, shock morphing his face into something less dangerous. ‘The one who killed her, is he dead?’

Whatever surprise surfaced on Harry’s face was temporary. He inclines his head, something far more respectful about him as his eyes lit in understanding, however frigid. ‘And he’s not coming back, not this time,’ Harry informs, as he locks Dudley’s phone and hands it back.

‘…I suppose your lot know not to bother us here?’ Mum asks in concession as Dad sputters next to her. She stands tall though, ramrod straight, hands interlinked in front of her as she juts out her chin.

‘They won’t want to,’ Harry responds without inflexion. ‘I have - transportation. When they call, I’ll make my own way there. No other freaks will step through the door.’

Mum’s face tightens, but she accepts this silently as her lips purse. ‘Fine, you may stay,’ she allows much to Dudley’s relief even if his Dad looks less then thrilled. They’d most likely be having “words” later. ‘However, I don’t want to see any of your - your _freakishness_ in this house, do you understand?’

‘Understood,’ Harry replied simply.

‘Your things -' Mum was about to go on when Harry held up a hand.

‘Stay with me, including my wand.’ On this Harry is strong, his voice deepens. ‘Wizarding Britain is still in a state of emergency and I can’t protect anyone here without it.’ He doesn’t outrightly say, like he had to Dudley, that things were still shit and that the danger was pretty severe. He doesn’t need to, the implications are clear.

‘Now hold on.’ Dad moves forward, was about to step into the kitchen where the invisible line had been drawn when Mum’s hand slaps down onto his shoulder to stop him. Her nose is flaring, her penned eyebrows a tight knot on her forehead.

‘It’s not to be used without provocation,’ Mum states in the light of _other freaks banging down the door_. ‘I don’t want to see it and if I find out you’ve been using it for nonsense than you’ll be out on your ear.’

‘Okay, fine.’ Harry nods. ‘It’s not like I can use it for anything else, anyway.’

‘What?’ Dudley frowns in sudden distraction. ‘What do you mean?’

Harry turns to him, eyebrow raised. ‘I’m still underage, I can’t use magic in a muggle area, remember?’

This brings Dudley up short. ‘But.’ He flounders, mouth loose as it looks for something to bite into. ‘But you fought that war -‘

Harry snorts dismissively, eyes diverting to a far corner wall. ‘Yeah?’

‘No more talk of this either!’ Mum suddenly exclaims as if in a panic.

Harry hums and concedes that as he glances back at his aunt and uncle. ‘It’s - what, five now? Want me to start making dinner?’ he asks even if he’s already dragged back his chair with the backs of his knees and partially stood from it. The wince is barely noticeable as his puts weight back onto his legs but Dudley sees.

‘The normal way?’ Mum asks but her voice is higher than usual.

‘The only way,’ Harry confirms as he walks to the kitchenette, limping. Dudley doesn’t imagine how Mum’s eyes widen nor how her jaw loosens in shock at how poorly Harry moves. Her breath hitches and Dudley expects her to something. ‘Anything that you had planned for tonight?’

‘…steak.’ His Mum’s face hardens, eyes darkening their colour from their pale sage tones to something far more toxic.

‘Harry,’ Dudley says.

‘Got it,’ Harry responds as he starts to rustle through the cabinets, familiarising himself with their contents as he begins to pull what he needs out of them.

It doesn’t get any less awkward after that.

Four months slip by as Harry re-slots himself back into their lives and into the household. He’d picked up a lot of chores without being asked. Dudley had told Harry he didn’t _need_ to because seeing Harry slave away on cooking, or cleaning made him feel uncomfortable; like nothing had changed.

In some aspects, it hadn’t. Or they hadn’t, it was Harry that wasn’t the same. Dad was in a constant bad mood now and seemed to have rededicated his life to snapping at Harry with snide comments, most of which centred around the wizards or Voldemort or the war. He’d use any excuse to become aggressive and try and rile Harry up.

It never worked. Harry was unexpressive and unwilling to rise to the taunts. The one time Dad had taken an ill-advised swing at Harry he hadn’t even used magic to defend himself, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t. The fact that Harry, five foot something and probably weighing less than Dudley’s _mother_ was able to take down a man twice his size and triple his weight, well, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but that’s what Dudley had been.

Little had come from that particular confrontation other than Dad not trying anything physical again. It was something to be glad for but Harry seemed perpetually unbothered by the abuse. Unbothered or just used to it? Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea, but Harry didn’t have any other relatives that Dudley knew about, and the wizards weren’t an option.

Mum’s behaviour hadn’t been that much better but she was quieter about her displeasure. She always had been. She excelled at being passive aggressive which was even easier for Harry to play oblivious too. It was all water off a ducks back. Because he was turning such a trained eye away, that could be why he never saw how Mum would look at him.

Dudley caught her staring a lot, when she forgot. It was sort of…forlorn, wistful maybe, but Dudley couldn’t say he understood it. He was supposed it was to do with Aunt Lily but he never asked, never called her on it. Whatever it was that shadowed his Mum’s face wasn’t exactly positive. She left Harry alone for the most part.

Dudley, himself, spent a lot of time trying to get Harry into a routine. Harry liked his space; liked to bury himself under his sheets in the guest room. He didn’t sleep a lot but some days rousing him from bed took a lot.

Dudley didn’t want to force Harry but it wasn’t exactly healthy, and he’d promised to show Harry what he’d missed since he;d been away. His cousin probably didn’t realise the quickness of technological advances, not that he’d ever had much of a chance to experience it.

Dudley had decided on introducing Harry to his consoles, testing him out on games. Harry allowed Dudley the entrainment of watching him fail a few times, before Dudley actually started _teaching._ It was mostly fun, or the most fun they ended up having together with how much Harry was falling apart.

‘I don’t get it,’ Harry had stated, almost pouty as he stared at the screen in front of him. ‘That’s not how magic works.’

Dudley had to sigh and he supposed it was his own fault by digging out his old copy of Skyrim. Something like COD wouldn’t have brought about this problem. ’I know but I doubt there was a wizard on the development team, to tell the rest of them how to create the magic mechanics.

Harry huffs but his smile had been real enough.

He doesn’t smile a lot so every one Dudley pulls out of him feels like a achievement. Not that all of them were honest. Just Harry losing some of the tension in his shoulders was enough, even if it felt like a compromise.

Somewhere between getting Harry to play with him on multiplayer and giving him a whirl on co-op with his clan, he’d fixed his computer; got it to startup and began to show him the safer areas of the internet. Harry is interested enough, but in a way some people are interested in the fact there is oxygen to breathe and convert.

Scott brings up the problem directly over one of their nightly chats. Dudley told him as much as he could, partly because he had to speak to _someone,_ but mostly because he was bloody worried and the more time his cousin spent with them, the more worried he got. He’d explained that Harry had been through some shit, that his parents were killed when he was a baby and that their murderer had been involved with the terrorist attacks that’d been happening around England.

Dudley was vague and although Scott was curious, he never outrightly asked. Mostly, Dudley spoke about how Harry barely ate, couldn’t sleep and woke up screaming the times he did. He’d stare into space occasionally, stop mid-sentence when he _did_ speak and wasn’t always… _there_ , like he thought he was somewhere else entirely. It wasn’t right.

Nothing Dudley did seemed to help. Co-op brought about Harry’s snarkier side, and social interaction even over Discord livened him up a bit but he didn’t seem any…more Harry-like. There were flashes but nothing really stuck. Harry would bury himself back into his skin in a moments notice and that wasn’t…how he’d been.

Scott was smarter than Dudley ever could be. He just _got things._ Half the time Dudley wondered why Scott wanted to be friends with a dumbass like him. It didn’t take him long to realise what was up, even with the omissions or the outright lies Dudley had fed with the truth. ‘Dude,’ Scott had addressed in a quiet moment of contemplation. _‘Has he…you know, seen someone?’_

Scott’s wi-fi connection was good - great, but his room was dark with a single lamp to lit his face. It was enough to see his solemn expression. ‘…what do you mean?’ Dudley asks slowly.

 _‘Sometimes, Lee, you disappoint me.’_ Scott sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. _‘Your cousin, Harry. Dude that’s been destroying our rep on Discord? Has he seen a councillor or something?’_

Dudley opened his mouth but nothing came our. ‘No…you mean like, for mental stuff?’

Scott’s brow furrows. _‘Lee, I shouldn’t need to tell you that Dude’s not doin’ great.’_

Dudley hesitates before quietly exhaling. ‘Yeah. No, I’m…more than stressed about it.’

_‘If everything you’ve said is true, Lee…’_ Scott pauses with rare uncertainty. _‘It kind of sounds like he has PTSD.’_

‘PTSD?’ 

_ ‘Well, yeah. You’ve said he’s gone through some shit and it sounds like he has a lot of the symptoms. Want me to send you a good webpage?’  _

‘…yeah, okay.’

As per usual, Scott was right.

Dudley’d read every line and steadily got more concerned, as the symptoms were nearly entirely made up of the problems he’d noticed Harry as having. Dudley ended up searching for treatment but the top ones read as antidepressants or therapy or a mixture of both. Those weren’t…possible. Those things came from seeing a doctor and getting assessed. Harry wasn’t able to go their surgery and speak to a GP about how he’d fought a magical war, and how it now affected him.

Did wizards have stuff like that?

It didn’t seem like it or they’d have done something already, wouldn’t they?

Either way, Dudley couldn’t take Harry to see a doctor to get it sorted, and the suggestions of “talking it out” wasn’t really…

Harry wouldn’t open up to Dudley. Harry talked to him well enough, and went along with stuff that he wanted them to do together - within reason, but it wasn’t like they were close enough for something like that.

‘Exposure therapy,’ Scott said to him weeks later, long after Harry had gone to bed, and Dudley was trying to find a way to help that wouldn’t shut Harry done or further hurt him. ‘Is there, like, any way for you to be able to do that?’

‘Exposure?…’ Dudley repeated before it clicked; what he could do. What might help. ‘I’ve got it.’ Dudley sprung from his swivel chair, clutching at his monitor. ‘Scott, mate, I know I promised you that second Nerve-Gear…’

Scott’s eyes widened spectacularly and he sulked but he was a nice guy. ‘If you think it’ll help,’ he’d muttered in agreement, arms crossed over his chest because he hadn’t been able to afford the system. Dudley had ended up ordering two for them to do together. ‘I want a go eventually though!’

‘Sure, give it a few weeks and we’ll switch. Harry thinks you’re an okay dude,’ Dudley had agreed.

A few hours later (because Dudley’s sleeping pattern was that of your typical gamer), at breakfast, Dudley brought it up just as Harry finished serving them and had sat down himself. ‘So, bro,’ he began as Harry started cutting his bacon to pieces. He needed the fat but Dudley wished he wouldn’t mutilate it so much. ‘There’s this game…’

Harry looked at him with diluted amusement. ‘Another one?’

‘You should be more grateful,’ Dad growled as he shovelled food into his mouth while Mum settled with ignoring the conversation in general.

‘Yeah but this one’s a bit different,’ Dudley replies slowly. ‘The game’s like an RPG, called _Sword Art Online_ but you play it on a Nerve-Gear. It’s virtual reality; like if you were transported there. The Nerve-Gear interrupts the signals your brain sends to your body and relays it to your character, so playing will be like you’re actually in the game.’

Throughout Dudley’s explanation Harry got more and more nervous. Dudley’s stomach shifted uncomfortably. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all -

‘You’ll be doing that with him,’ Mum butts in, her hands like stone around her mug as she stares coolly at Harry.

Harry frowned at her. ‘I don’t -’

‘ _I_ don’t care. That game has been all over the news since it was announced that the EU was allowing the ridiculousness into our borders. I don’t want Dudders doing it alone.’ Mum’s face is several types of disapproving. ‘You will play it with him and keep him safe. Clear?’

‘Crystal.’

Later, when Dad is at work and Mum had gone over for afternoon tea with a neighbour, Dudley had sat Harry down. ‘With my magic,’ Harry had started with brief hesitation. ‘I’d be…worried about shorting the -’

‘Nerve-Gear.’

‘Right. I’d be worried about my magic shorting the Nerve-Gear out.’ Harry sighs then, tired as he rubs his eyes. ‘It doesn’t really affect anything while I’m just using a set of controllers, but I’m not sure how my magic will behave if the Nerve-Gear sends my brain through the system.’

Dudley hadn’t thought of that. 'Then…would you prefer if I called it off? Scott was going to have the second one, anyway -‘

‘I don’t think I have much choice in the matter now,’ Harry laughed dryly, shortly. The sound always tempering out before it could reach its height.

‘No. No, dude.’ Dudley shakes his head as he slides from his desk chair to join Harry on the bed. ‘If you really don’t think its a good idea -’

‘It’ll only be for a few hours anyway, right?’ Harry dismisses like his knuckles weren’t white. ‘It should be fine.’

‘…just a few hours.’ Dudley nods as he bites into his lip.

And suddenly, it is November and Dudley’s house receives a delivery from Argus. The Up driver comments on how lucky Dudley is to be one of the few people able to play the launch, when Dudley gets called down to sign for the package.

‘You really don’t have to have to,’ he reaffirms even as he continues to set the game up on his computer. He didn’t turn to speak to Harry who was still sat on his bed, NerveGear in his lap as his fingers lightly examined the headset. He hadn’t moved from his position since Dad had shoved him inside.

But Dudley wanted to push Harry for his options. His cousin was just barely getting his grasp on gaming, and if Harry didn’t feel safe then Dudley wanted Harry to decline. Harry didn’t reply right away either, but Dudley had gotten used to that. In fact, he’d have been more surprised if there _had_ been an immediate response.

Dudley continued the installation process. It was annoying as it was more complicated with setting up the two NerveGears to the one computer. It made a relatively simply program to install take twice as long. It was a compliant Dudley had seen kicking around the few English forums from the betas.

‘Yeah,’ Harry says. His voice was rough, as disused as it was, Dudley was just grateful anything came out at all. ‘Yeah, I know but…I’d rather avoid an argument to be honest.’

‘Harry,’ Dudley sighs even as he finally finishes the finicky installation process and clicks the _finish_ with a bit more force than necessary. He turns in his chair to face his cousin. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it in front of Mum, I forgot that she hadn’t been too pleased with me ordering it.’

“Not too pleased” was perhaps kind to her reaction when Dudley had let slip that he had bought SAO. Their local newspaper was especially against the idea of NerveGear. The rag liked to comment on how “dangerous” this generation was getting and how it was a “direct result from the media they consumed”. The amount of hate they spewed made Dudley irritated just reading the headlines.

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Harry shrugged noncommittally as he tilted he NerveGear in his hands. 

‘I don’t get how she thinks you’ll be able to protect me anyway,’ Dudley comments and even if that’d come out of his mouth with an air of humour, he genuinely didn’t. His mum’s comprehension of technology was about on level with Harry’s own.

Harry’s face softened even if he mockingly scowled at Dudley. ‘What, you don’t think the Chosen One is strong enough?’

Dudley made a show of rolling his eyes. Harry would say shit like that even with the effects of the war still written all over him, with his spine bent like he was Atlas and he was getting tired of holding up a world, with his scars and nightmares. ‘Yeah, Cuz. You’re plenty strong, “chosen one” or not, but that’s not what I meant.’

Hopefully, if everything went right, then SAO could help. A new environment would be healthy and “exposing” Harry to some non-life-threatening combat should be good. SAO didn’t have a magic system so it wouldn’t touch too close to home. The FullDive should be…safe.

‘Seriously though, if you’re really against playing than you can just wait in my room while I Dive, until I log out.’ The suggestion is offered even if Dudley doesn’t think Harry would take it. 

Harry shakes his head with a minuscule smile tilting his mouth. It was an expression Dudley longed to burst into something brighter, but there were days he couldn't even coax out _that_ much.

‘No, I did promise.’

 _No you didn’t,_ Dudley thinks in resignation. _You’re too careful for that._

‘I have to protect you from all those cyber monsters, right?’ Harry teased and wasn’t _that_ a fucking miracle. ‘Besides, I didn’t just spend an hour fiddling with your computer to create that profile for that character, for _nothing.’_

‘Your _avatar_ , Wizard,’ Dudley corrects lightly. They’d set all of that up earlier after Dudley had helped Harry set his NerveGear up. Some of that had been awkward, but…funny. The character creation and account start up had taken the longest, because Dudley had been determined for Harry to pick his own handle. 

(‘ _Why can’t I just be “Harry”?’_

 _‘Because that’s your_ real name. _And you don’t think that the other nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven players, someone else will pick something close to_ Harry.’

_‘It’s my name.’_

_‘Exactly!’)_

Eventually Harry had seemed to get that that had been a no-go and had picked something else, but Dudley didn’t think that his cousin had taken any of it all that seriously. Well, his funeral. Harry can suffer the puns of his bad _choices._ Dear God.

‘Just…’ Harry murmurs, seems to falter for a moment before he comes back stronger. ‘Don’t blame me if my magic ends up frying your computer.’

Dudley snorts even as he has to contain a wince at the thought of the computer, the one he had worked so hard to make, going up in flames. ‘Yeah, yeah.’ That wasn’t something he wanted Harry to be concerned about, though. Besides, it was just one FullDive. Just one. Dudley doubted that something would go wrong right away.

Turning back to his monitor, Dudley noted that it had thankfully finished its reboot and was waiting for him to input his password. Logging back in, he waited for a moment as the black screen turned to display his background image. Seconds later everything had loaded.

He glanced to the corner of his screen for the time. _08:48._

_Nearly time._

‘All done?’ Harry asks and Dudley almost jumps out of his skin. He looked over his shoulder to see his cousin leaning over him, propping himself up by the edge of the desk while his other hand held the NerveGear. 

‘Would you stop doing that!’ Dudley snaps half-heartedly as he grasps hold of his chest, as his heart had just tried to exit staging fucking left. Harry had always been a fast little git, he had just turned into a frigging _ninja_ now. His footsteps were bloody nonexistent.

Harry raised an eyebrow and didn’t apologise. Dudley didn’t expect him to, heart attack notwithstanding. Those skills had most likely saved Harry’s life. ‘Yeah. It’s finished,’ Dudley breathes. ‘Last chance to pull out.’

‘Hm. “That’s what she said”,’ Harry quoted with his fingers because he was a _brat_.

‘I regret ever introducing you to my friends.’ Dudley cringes. He’d felt so immature when he’d first gotten Harry on Discord, because Harry just seemed so much _older._ He put up with them all, tolerant and had teased them  _so hard_  but it was obvious that although he got on well enough with everyone, that the differences were evident. They’d thought Harry was cool though, weirdness included. 

‘No you don’t,’ Harry laughed.

‘If we’re doing this than go sit down before you really _do_ kill me.’ Dudley jokingly pushes Harry back towards the bed, as the clock ticks towards the launch. The timing for this was a bit weird because the servers came online everywhere. It was international, too which. Yeah, it just seemed odd.

_Sword Art Online_ was the first VRMMO of its time, so even people who were unbothered by the first title for FullDive had picked up a copy. There were worries about the servers crashing but Dudley figured they knew what they were doing, even _if_ he’d have wanted it to start a little earlier. In Japan it was one in the evening, but England? They were eight hours ahead. 

Though they had spent most of the day for set up. It would have been quick enough if not for Harry and having to register the two NerveGears to one computer. 

‘Only a few hours,’ Harry says for confirmation as he limps towards the bed.

‘Yeah. Wouldn’t want to get too tired even if I _do_ have my bodyguard there with me,’ Dudley jokes as he picks his Nervegear up from his desk. He makes sure the connecting led is properly inserted before he pushes the headset on and that the WAN LED is winking at him.

Harry huffs in disgruntlement as he settles on the bed. ‘Whatever you’re paying this bodyguard doesn’t seem enough,’ he retorts while putting his own NerveGear on, automatically moving the visor into place. His glasses had been gone since he first turned up, but he’d been gone for so long they didn’t notice till later. Harry mentioned some kind of “correction” when it was brought up, but said little else about it, which was fine. Dudley decided just to enjoy the benefits.

‘Shove off,’ Dudley grumbles as he rolls his shoulders, wishing he’d bought that gaming chair while he’d had the chance. The introductions said that players’ had to be in inclined positions, with the NerveGear connected to power for the first play-through. He only had one outlet so He’d given Harry the bed where the power source was near, while Dudley used a USB cable connected to his computer for his.

Harry had made minimal fuss but he had tried to fight it. _‘It’s your bed, Dudley,’_ he’d argued but Harry needed it more. Sitting without his legs stretched out was difficult for Harry and Dudley had no idea if there were any other injuries he didn’t know about.

‘Remember what you have to do?’

Harry sighs as he tries to settle on the mattress. ‘Yeah, once I have this contraption on my head I say the starting phrase and it’ll intimate the programme. When everything goes black I shouldn’t worry because that’s the machine working, and not me, ya’know, _dying,’_ Harry stressed through his teeth. ‘Once that’s done there should be a shit tone of colours flying at me, which is fine too. Not like sniffing glue gone wrong _at all.’_

‘Have a lot of experience with sniffing glue?’ Dudley asks wryly because he _may_ have gone through the process a lot. Nagged, maybe.

‘Shut up.’ Harry’s tone is petulant as Dudley fixes his visor to cover his eyes. ‘Since you’ve already set an account up to this headset, my details and settings should fill automatically and if not, then logging in will be “self-explanatory”.’

‘Right,’ Dudley agrees. ‘I knew you had it in you.’

Harry heaves a long suffering sigh.

‘…remember to wait around the spawn point if you arrive first and don’t see me, okay?’ Dudley says.

‘Whose the bodyguard again?’ Harry mutters but it’s mostly in jest.

Dudley shifts down in his chair to get more comfortable as they go quiet. Spying the digital clock holo in his visor he blinks at it. _08:59._

He’ll think about that one minute when time becomes scarce and things change.

Right now, it was just a minute. Later it would be the time he wished he could undo when playing SAO turned into playing SAO on fear of death, with thousands of other players, all not wanting to die or _wanting_ to die but afraid of when it’d happen. 

For now, all of that was in front of them. A nightmare still creeping, waiting to pounce. 

The minute passed and with the NerveGear on and waiting, the two cousins exclaimed in unison: 

_‘Link Start!’_

And as reality faded and rebuilt itself, everything began anew. 


	3. Meeting God

 

* * *

**November 22nd, 2022**

* * *

 

He couldn’t stop staring at his hands. They were attached to the rest of him; moved as he commanded and when he curled his fingers he could feel his nails digging into his gloved palm. He could control them and feel them but they weren’t his hands. He supposed they were about the right size and they shared the same skin colour - from what he could see of the rest of him, anyway - but they weren’t his.

The fingerless gloves that he was wearing were leather. The scars, small and sliver that reached from his knuckles and his nail bed were missing, and so were the callouses he’d built up. Heck, even his nails were different, no longer bitten through from stress and grieve. No, they were still short but perfectly rounded with a smooth edge. 

This sort of technology was incredible, but also unnerving.

As distracted as he’d been, Harry nearly got blown over when someone - a player - ran full force into him. The impact jolted him but the guy barely stopped to speak as he waved apologetically at Harry but continued on his way.

_‘Scusi!’_ the boy called much to Harry’s confusion. Harry had had some experience with French from Fleur and her sister from long nights and bruises and broken hopes. Definitely hadn’t sounded like German or Bulgarian that’d fall fro Victor’s sharp mouth, sound all right angles. 

When another player pushed passed him, Harry decided that it was probably best that he moved his arse out of the - what had Dudley called it? - the spawning point? It sounded brilliantly strange to Harry, but he’d already been taught how behind the times he was.

Still, this place - this game was beautiful. Harry had never quite seen anywhere like it, and as he stepped out of the Room of Resurrection, and out into what looked like a courtyard. The sky was blue and the sun was out and in full force. It all seemed very European until Harry noted the weather. 

It was no real wonder that Dudley was raving about _Sword Art Online._ It seemed almost dreamlike with its bright colours and its peaceful scenery. Harry’s eyes kept roaming but there was so much to see, so much detail from the stones under his feet, to the fountain just ahead and the houses just further around him.

There was a lot of players, Dudley had hinted as much but…he disliked crowds, even when they weren’t paying him any attention. It was unsettling. Too many people that Harry couldn’t keep an eye on them. There was nowhere out in the open that Harry could wait without leaving his back open, so he settled near the fountain, on one of the benches.  

Players were bustling around him with a fluidity of motion that hadn’t been possible in the other games Dudley had made him play, with a freedom of expression that Harry hadn’t thought possible. And everyone seemed so…happy, excited. 

It’d been so long since Harry had had anything to look forward to, that he couldn't begin to relate. Dudley seemed more animated once the Nervegears had arrived, but he’d been more worried, with a level of consideration Harry hadn’t thought his cousin had been capable of. 

Dudley’s change in attitude had been enough for Harry to agree to using the Nervegear. Honestly, this whole situation was strange. When Kingsley had taken him to his relatives new house, he’d expected outrage but not the type he got. Not outrage on his behalf. He _definitely_ hadn’t expected his cousin to let him in with a constipated expression of worry, a strained smile and to share words that lacked animosity, that were amicable.

Everything else was equal only to the twilight zone. 

(No other magical creature would allow something to mess with their heads - never mind a _muggle_ something. That their magic could quite by accident, make go _boom._ But Harry had… Fuck, what was he _doing?)_

‘Har - _dude!’_ The voice is the only thing Harry recognises as he turns to the left and sees a player waving, arm in the air while trying to fit through the gaps to Harry. The closer he gets, Harry thinks he might recognise Dudley around the eyes but finds that his alias is long forgotten.

Harry stands to meet Dudley half-way though, smoothly without problems with his lame leg. (That was nice, to be relieved of the deep seated ache. To move like he could _before.)_ He glances to the left of Dudley’s head, where he’d been told to look for a players’ ID. Sure enough, _Decha, Lv1_ could be read clear enough.

No wonder Harry hadn’t been able to remember it. That was so weird! Was it even English? ‘What’d you do…hit your face with the keyboard?’ He pointed in the general direction of the “ID gauge” when Dudley frowned.

‘Oh shut up,’ Dudley responded with a roll of his eyes. ‘“Choice”.’ 

Harry grimaced in an acknowledgement that, _yeah_ , that hadn’t been the best idea he’d ever had. Dudley had demanded he find something to call himself and Harry had drawn a specular blank. Naming himself after a moniker he’d rather not have had been uninspired. (He was just so cynical now that he felt a real connection with Snape. Because what was more _ironic_ than a “Chosen One” with no _choice?)_

‘Man, this is weird,’ Dudley breathes as he stares at Harry with wide eyes.

That was one way to put it. Though Harry had had experience with Polyjuice, there was something different about this. It was almost like…Tonks, when she transformed herself but left enough behind for it to still be _her._ Dudley, himself had made some odd changes by giving himself a shallower jaw and by darkening his hair to black. His cheeks were a tad sharper and his ears seemed larger and flatter. 

Dudley’s bodybuilder figure he’d spent who knows how long cultivating since Harry had left, having trimmed down and bulked up with muscle - was more streamlined, though there hadn’t been much altered of his body.

‘Well, we might try moving around a bit,’ Dudley says, gesturing to the entrance to the city a lot of the other players were disappearing into.

‘Right.’ Harry stands and is still marvelling at his ease of movement when Dudley stops them.

‘Oh, hold on. We haven’t friended each other.’ 

Harry blinked up at Dudley. ‘Oh…’  

‘Oi, don’t stare off to space. I’ve gone through nearly my entire Stream library with you. You remember what Friending is, right?’ 

The concept was a bit…board but Harry nodded. With a lot of the multiplayer Harry had played, he’d just used one of Dudley’s spare accounts and hadn’t had to do much outside play the actual game. ‘How do we…’ Harry monitors between them in question. 

‘Okay, so.’ Dudley raises his hand and while lifting it into the air, pinched his thumb and forefinger together and swipes downwards. Following the arc of his movement, icons slide into place in front of him. 

Dudley pulled Harry over to see, all but tucking Harry into his side. The icons and singer tab stood, solid as Dudley demonstrated. ‘So, see this,’ Dudley mutters as he navigates through the menu options like this wasn’t the first time he’d played _Sword Art Online._  

It hadn’t taken ten seconds before a popup appeared before Harry and he almost jumped out of his skin. 

> ** Invite **
> 
> ** Decha Sends A Friend Request. Do You Accept? **
> 
> **[O] [X]  **

Harry stared at it as he tried to figure out how it worked. Dudley must have gotten a bit bored because he sighed. ‘You tap on the circle to accept and the cross to deny, Wizard,’ he informed, exasperation clear as day. Harry quickly pressed the blue circle. 

‘What’s the deal with how it works?’ Harry inquires as the window closes and he looks back to Dudley.  

‘Pretty similar to other friends lists. You can check a friend’s position on a map, see their status, send private messages. Stuff like that,’ Dudley enumerates before clapping Harry on the shoulder. He blinks when he feels the weight where Dudley touches him. That was…a bit unsettling. ‘Don’t go friending any weirdos, okay?’

‘Unlikely,’ Harry mutters. 

‘Har - _Choice_.’ Dudley frowns. ‘I…dude. I know you been through some sh - stuff. But not every thing’s safe online, you gotta be careful. Don’t you remember any of those internet safety talks we got during primary school? I know you ain’t exactly a kid, Harry, and that…that you’ve gone up against terrorists but this is a different sort of danger, that you kind of need to be aware of.’ 

‘I…didn’t mean to make light of anything,’ Harry says eventually. 

Dudley sighs. ‘I know you didn’t,’ he concedes. ‘Look, I get that you’re a good judge of character. You had me pegged at five but you’ve gotten used to a certain type of guy, yeah? Evil and mad and not… _bad_ and _sick._ So, I dunno. Just, remember….there’s trouble here too. There’s other stuff out there then the type you’ve seen.’ 

Harry’s chagrin in increased and he couldn’t help bit feel smaller at that moment, because his last intention was to make Dudley think that he didn’t take more non-magical centric problems seriously. It’d just been so long. ‘I…remember the internet safety talk,’ Harry returns quietly. ‘A police officer came in after Betty had gone out to see someone she’d met online, without telling her parents. She didn’t come back to school after that.’ 

Dudley blinked. ‘Yeah…Betty.’ He nodded but his tone was distance. ‘Just…think about who you’re talkin’ to, if we ever get separated. Don’t share any personal information. No one here needs to know anything like that.’ 

‘…Guess “Decha” is something that I’ll actually have to use, huh?’ Harry grins weakly. 

‘Why’d you think I made you do at that sh- stuff?’ Dudley demands, which is fair. Harry had taken a long time doing it, mainly because Dudley had usually been the one to do that type of stuff with the other games he’d gotten involved in. ‘You are who you created.’ 

‘Very philosophical,’ Harry comments but raises his hands when Dudley growls. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll be careful. I promise.’ 

Dudley huffs but lets it go. ‘C’mon, there’s more to see than this.’ 

‘Right,’ Harry agrees but allows himself the acknowledgement that he’d been a bit blinded, and that Dudley seemed to be genuinely trying to look out for Harry. He was right too. Voldemort wasn’t the only thing out there and he wasn’t invincible.  

Maybe pure-blood supremacy was contagious. If so, Harry was starting to understand the problems Wizarding Britain suffered from. Muggles could be a threat to him as much as a person with magic. He needed to get off his high house. Merlin, what was _wrong_ with him? 

Harry’s silent apology was to allow his cousin to drag him around this game - this world; Aincrad. It didn’t take the hours he was there to see how remarkable it was, as Dudley spent time and effort to share the knowledge he learnt through forums and news. Merlin, there was so much to this place. It was so… _complicated._ It felt so three dimensional with its rules and themes, and the people too. 

It was very different to the games Harry had experienced before.  

Dudley had shown him around Starting City first, through the houses and the shops, eateries until they visited the market. Dudley had wanted some weaponry and gear and this was the cheapest place for it. They had both been given an amount of currency to start them out, but it wasn’t much “Cor” so they had to be careful with what they bought.  

In the end, Dudley had gone for a Broadsword and a Wooden Shield. He’d mentioned how he wanted to play on the strength stat, and suggested Harry decide on the weapon with the style of combat that would best suit the attributes he wanted. Harry had taken a bit of time, contemplating between different types of swords that was in his price range, and his ability, before Harry had shrugged and decided _to hell with it._

Twenty minutes later, they were walking away from the market with a Bronze sword, a Butter Knife and a Wooden Staff sitting in Harry’s inventory. Dudley had been a bit perplexed at Harry’s apparent indecision, but seemed to have shrugged it off with a _‘it’s your skill slots you’ll confuse.’_ It was nice to see that SAO had a weapon variety for a game that obviously wanted to emphasise swords, but Harry had been taught the important of being prepared. 

On their way out, they’d also purchased some Potions and a Transport Crystal. With little Cor between them, Dudley had taken him to some seating outside a cafe to teach him how to equip weaponry and the like. Harry had decided on using the staff simply to aid Dudley’s reach with his sword.  

(Mad-Eye’s training hadn’t just included the paranoid auror beating the crap out of him. Harry had also been taught how to strategise, that real battle required a lot more than running in half-cocked and attempting to overpower his opponent. And a lesson from Mad-Eye is a lesson learnt. _Painfully.)_  

Once Harry had gotten the handle of that, Dudley was leading him out of Starting City and out into the wild, which was just was stunning as the rest of what he’d seen. Though it’d been a bit of a shock when Harry’d seen a boar materialise in front of him. Dudley had drawn his sword then, in front of a field full of animals and Harry was quick to follow.  

That had started a session of “follow the leader”, whereby Dudley would show him how to attack the boars and Harry copied him. He wasn’t always successful as Harry didn’t always trust the mechanics of the game for him to take over. He was a _fighter._ He was used to his body following his commands, but there was little of that here. 

The “sword skills” Dudley had mentioned were…tedious.

‘You’ve got to get into the right position to activate them. We’ve only got Horizontal and Horizontal Arc, but those are the easiest to unlock,’ Dudley said in one of their breaks. ‘They do a lot more damage so it’s better if you _try.’_

‘I _am_ trying,’ Harry had protested. ‘It’s…just difficult, letting the system and then I get stuck like that.’ 

‘Yeah, the cool down is meant to even out the advantages of sword skills,’ Dudley had agreed. ‘But it’s not all that different to one an opponent gets you into a corner, and your relaxes are too slow to make a counter. You’ve just got to start thinking of it as a separate thing.’

‘..right,’ Harry said thoughtfully. 

He’d done better after that.

More players had swarmed their area the longer they were there but it hadn’t been…terrible. Eventually, Dudley had defeated the last boar going for them and he’d turned to Harry. ‘Wannafinish here?’ he’d asked. 

Harry had been good with that and sheathed his weapon, and allowed himself to be guided up to one of the hills. They sat there, watching as the sky turned orange. Harry finds himself relaxing as the temperature begins to cool with the setting of the sun. ‘Why…’ 

‘Hm?’ Dudley inquires from where he is laid out by Harry’s side. 

‘Why are things only focused when I’m looking at them?’ Harry asks because it was actually pretty distracting. 

‘Saves render and loading time,’ Dudley responds like that makes all that much sense to Harry. ‘I’ll explain better tomorrow. Or…later today.’ 

Harry blinks. ‘We’ve been in here that long?’ 

‘Suggesting you’ve enjoyed yourself, wizard?’ Dudley smirks then, looking _way_ too pleased with himself. As they fall into silence again, Dudley points out into the distance. ‘What do they look like? In your world?’ 

Harry follows Dudley’s hand and squints at dragons flying in the sky. He finds himself snorting. If a pure-blood saw that they’d have a heart attack. ‘They’re too…pretty,’ Harry decides after a pause of watching the colourful beasts. ‘Not that dragons aren’t - you know, and I guess dragons look different everywhere. But, the ones I’ve seen are…rougher.’  

Dudley laughs through a yawn. ‘Suppose that’s to be expected.’ 

Harry shrugs at that. ‘You lot do a lot better at interpreting a world you either don’t know exists or don’t believe in, than we do, when we can flit in-between.’ He can’t quite stop the scowl. Even Dumbledore with his pro-muggleborn rhetoric never bothered to learn anything about people, or cultures that lived and had developed outside of magic.

‘It’s pretty funny, when you think about it.’ Harry laughs dully because it really, really _wasn’t._ ‘As intolerable as they accuse you lot of being, I see the same attitudes there when mug - when your lot actually try and think of things outside of your realm of possibility. With…fantasy and sci-fi and I get that it’s not perfect, but…’ 

Harry was somewhat mortified to feel tears clog his vision, to feel the burning in his eyes. Why programme something like that? Who wants to be able to cry in a game? _No one._ Harry grits his teeth and glares them away. 

Perhaps it was an issue of his. Something else to bury away because thinking about stuff like this never helped. _Seeing_ the problems wasn’t - Harry wasn’t able to help them. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter that he had defeated Voldemort. (‘K _illed him, Harry!’) (’_ What is wrong _without you?! Why did you have to end this in more bloodshed?!’)_ To’ve made a difference at all, he’d have to defeat the thing that’d _caused_ Voldemort and how’d someone like him do something like _that?_

‘Choice,’ Dudley says, propping himself up with his arm before shifting into a sitting position. He was concerned, Harry could see that and wasn’t that _amazing?_ Harry hadn’t thought it’d be possible for his relatives to feel anything but hatred, and that was misguided because children learnt better and his aunt’s feelings towards him, Harry was starting to realise - had little to do with him at all. And Vernon - that man would have disliked him regardless. 

Non-magicals weren’t - 

Everything was _wrong_. 

‘I think I’m getting a bit tired, er…Decha,’ Harry states. ‘I’m going to go on ahead.’ With a flick of his wrist, his menu faithfully scrolls in front of him. He peers at it for a moment, while trying his damnedest to ignore Dudley’s worried expression as he looks over the different icons. It was the clog he was after and he taps it quickly.

> ** Options **
> 
> ** Help **

Harry frowned as he read the tab. He’d been sure that that was were the log out button should have been. Turning to Dudley who was watching him cautiously, he points towards his menu. ‘I…er, where was it again?’

With a sigh of great suffering, Dudley’s chin briefly bent low enough to greet his leather armour. ‘Ha - Choice, I showed you -’ Dudley had just opened his own and selected the same clog icon that Harry had, as he watches from Dudley’s side. His words peter out and his expression becomes troubled. 

‘Dud - Decha?’ Harry asks but Dudley just stands and Harry is quick to follow. 

Dudley is thumbing the button for the Game Master that has opened another window with a cartoon character, appearing as an old man who donned a beard and robe, but who also had a ripple effect distorting the image. Harry guessed it was loading. 

‘What’s the matter?’ Harry asks as his heartbeat starts to pick up. ‘Has something gone wrong?’

‘Yeah, sort of,’ Dudley muttered in distraction. ‘The log out buttons gone. Which is - yeah. Bad. I’m trying get hold of the Game Master but he’s not -‘ Dudley’s obviously a little panicked and rambling as the presses the button a few more times. And each time, when nothing changes, Harry’s unease grows. 

‘What does that mean? We’re not stuck, are we?’ Harry tried to keep his voice level but that was very difficult as his unease evolved into something darker, while the sun vanished over the horizon. 

‘I don’t know.’ Dudley’s answer did not fill Harry with confidence. ‘It depends on how long it’s been a problem. If it’s been missing since the launch than it should’ve already been fixed but…I dunno. This sort of thing shouldn’t happen; maybe in the alpha, but…’ 

‘So,’ Harry prompts uneasily. He knew basic things about games from Dudley forcing him to spend most of his free time playing them, but he was still very new to them and the terminology.

Dudley stares at the Game Master before meeting Harry’s gaze. ‘It’s a pretty serious problem. With how the Nervegear works, it’s not like we can take the headset off manually, we need the log out button.’ 

Harry was never without some kind of caution or fear so he knew what it tasted like. Bitting his lip, he wondered if he could make it bleed. He reaches out a hand to grasp hold of Dudley’s arm. ‘D-Dudley,’ he says, can’t help the name that falls out of his mouth or the unsteadiness of his voice. ‘My - my magic…’ 

His consciousness had never been “outside” his body before, he’d never been disconnected from his magic. A few hours, Dudley had said, and Harry had thought _that can’t do that much damage._ But, if they were stuck for _longer…_  

And suddenly panic was there too, with the caution and the fear because Harry knew of wizards and witches that didn’t use their magic; heard about how their cores became unstable, resulting in explosions and insanity and mutations - 

‘Calm down.’

Dudley was shaking him.

‘Harry, you need to calm down.’ 

_Why_ was Dudley shaking him?

‘People will already be aware of this. They’ll already be looking at the problem and if they can fix the button, they should just be able to shut down the servers. We won’t be here long, nothings gonna happen with your magic,’ Dudley was telling him, his hands on the tops of Harry’s shoulders firm and tight. ‘There’s nothing wrong with _you,_ but you need to breathe.’

Harry had never been good at being told what to do, but he found himself sucking in a desperate breath. He was staring into his cousin’s wide eyes. wishing - wishing more than anything they weren’t _his_ shade of grey. 

Gradually, Harry forced himself to relax and all but slumped into Dudley’s chest. ‘ _Sorry,’_ he whispered in exhaustion. That had been…an overreaction. Dudley awkwardly petted his back. ‘You’ve become better at this.’ 

Dudley snorts roughly but doesn’t move away. ‘I ever tell you about Alfie?’

Apropos of nothing. 'No,’ Harry roughly replies. 

‘Alfie’s this guy at my gym, he’s a scrawny guy but he’s really good in the ring,’ Dudley says slowly. ‘He kind of reminded me of you, for a bit actually. But he had some problems, like he’d get these panic attacks so Coach had to give us a talk about it.’ 

‘Useful,’ Harry mutters into leather.

Dudley makes an agreeing noise, hands firm but gentle again Harry’s back. He hadn’t know Dudley had been cable of any kind of care. ‘Coach was really strict about it cuz Alfie had been through some shit but he was one of us, innit? So Coach - he brought this therapist in,’ he explains attentively. ‘I ain’t that great at it, but…’

Harry wasn’t used to people touching him, not in a way that had any kindness to it. Hermione, a bit like Mrs Weasley, used to give him these glomps that demanded his attention. Ron hadn’t been much of a hugger but he’d clap Harry on the back, nudge Harry’s side, touch Harry’s wrists; tactile things to remind him that he was there. Sirius had been more reserved - cautious, but his hugs were the warmest out of everyone even if they were mourning, sorrowful things that had Harry needing to cling back.

Dudley was all his own, in his space like Hermione but awkward like Ron. And - and like Sirius, Dudley held him like he’d disappear. Harry hesitantly hugs back. He takes a breath, tries to take Dudley’s advice of _breathing._ ‘Sorry,’ he whispers in exhaustion. The freakout had been - completely unwarranted. 

‘Don’t go apologisin’ for this. Idiot.’ Dudley huffs as Harry calms down, is starting to relax when the sound of a gong cuts through the calm. It continues to ring like a bell that would cling at a funeral march. It was unnerving and unexpected as it echoed around them, from no apparent origin. 

Harry looked up to Dudley’s confused face. ‘What -?’ He hadn’t even finished his question when his vision whited out. Briefly, it felt like his body was floating, pins and needles spreading through his limbs before he materialised again, and the environment settled around him. 

Blinking back the lights in his eyes, Harry soon realised that the training meadow he’d been was gone. Now, he was standing in the square of Starting City with a mass of players that were popping up around him.  

‘We’ve - been transported,’ Dudley tells him tensely. His arms remain around Harry, tightening in this unknown situation they find themselves in and Harry allows it, allows it because he doesn’t know what’s happening. He doesn’t want to move, needs an explanation.

‘Maybe…they’ve brought us here for an announcement?’ he asks above the symphony of other confused voices. It was a reasonable suggestion if the forced teleportation hadn’t sounded like the rustle of _doxy_ rings, and Harry’s intuition wasn’t prickling at his brain like an itch he couldn’t reach.

Harry’s dominant hand twitches for a wand that doesn’t even exist here, when a mechanical sound from above alerts them to the flashing text that’s hanging above The Room of Resurrection. The symbol blinks in and out, the colour red:

> **Warning**.

_That…doesn’t sound good,_ Harry thinks lamely. His fight or flight instincts are tinging through the senses, too real to be part of the system. One of his hands jumps up to grasp hold of Dudley’s chest plate, his unfamiliar fingers digging into the rough leather in an attempt to keep his cousin close. It was stupid - stupid because Dudley hadn’t tried to move away. 

‘This isn’t…’ Dudley begins, but if he finishes Harry doesn’t hear it as the warning popups start to multiple; splintering across the sky until they are creating a dome of crimson. The imagery is disturbing as blood starts to leak through the creases, moulding into something horrific as the blood starts to droop into a sack like cyst.  

Numbly, Harry can feel something like sickness begin to build. He can barely stand the sight of blood now though he has been stoically bearing it for years, there has been too much of it for him to be unaffected by it now.  

His mind automatically winds back, traitorously reminding him of things Harry’d much rather forget. Like Hermione’s busted lip or the scrapes that lined Ginny’s hands. Ron’s broken, bitten leg. The slash cutting through Fleur’s pretty face. Cedric’s corpse which had been beaten and cut up from the maze and its creatures, before he’d been killed. 

_Stop it,_ Harry tells himself because the war had been worse - in the war _everyone_ was hurt; bleeding and _dying._ He can still smell the decay sometimes. No one realises what death smells like, because it isn’t just the rot. It’s the sweat that lingers, iron that makes the air heavy and the nausea from the ammonia, as the bowls emptied. 

There wasn’t anything romantic or glamours about death. Every time Harry saw blood he’d remember. He’d remember all the things he’d wish he could forget. 

So distracted with this is he, that he can barely focus on the red growth transforming into something humanoid. A character emerges, wearing a cloak with the hood up, indistinguishable from gender or face but that’s not what makes Harry’s breath catch. 

There is no face.

_They have no face._

There was just black shadows and smoke that evaporates like mist, albeit purple mist. This - this avatar was like a giant among ants as they loomed over them; a god among mortals, as lightning sparks off of their clock from their generation, blood still dripping. Still red.

_‘De…’_ Harry whispers, or tries, can’t quite bring himself to finish what he started. This is a game - something Dudley had asked him to play with him, like tens of other games they’d experienced together. 

This didn’t feel like an event or a cutscene, or anything else that Harry had experienced. This was setting off all of Harry’s suspicions. Harry felt scared and daft for feeling such, because this could be nothing - this could just be —

Dudley starts to rub his back, but his cousin’s concentration is entirely on the figure towering over them. When the avatar started to speak, it is in a language Harry recognises as Asian but he doesn’t comprehend a word as he stares at the avatar stupidly.

‘Bro,’ Dudley murmurs lowly and Harry pulls his eyes away long enough for Dudley to point down, towards the twin popups in front of them which Harry hadn’t noticed. He blinks at the screen and realises after a moment of vacantly goggling that this must be a translation.

> ** Attention players. **

The text was sharp and the more the avatar spoke, the more words appeared. Harry was apprehensive from looking away from the unknown avatar, but there wasn’t a lot of choice in the matter as more and more words appeared. 

> ** I welcome you to my world! You may know the Game Master avatar as Akihiko Kayaba but things are not as they seem; this is not a tutorial, and I am in control now.  **

_What?_ Harry thinks as he tries to read the rough translation again. This sounded off, something was very wrong. 

> ** I’m sure most of you have noticed by now that there is something missing from your main menus: the log out button.  **

They do not speak the same language but Harry shudders at the tone “Kayaba” deploys. It was too - conversational, polite but in the same way McGonagall had been to Umbridge every time that bitch stepped into her classroom or questioned her teaching, or really any time they shared air. 

> ** Let me assure you that this is not a defect in the game. **

_No,_ Harry thinks.  

> **I repeat: this is _not_ a defect. This was how my Sword Art Online was designed to be.**

 ‘Dudley?’

 Dudley looks disturbed and almost staggers an inch back at the re-introduction to Harry’s voice. ‘I - I. Don’t…know. I don’t -’

> ** You will not be able to log yourselves out of SAO and no one from the outside will be able to shut down, or remove the Nervegear.  **

  _What?_ But - how…was that _possible?_

> ** If anyone attempts to do so a transmitter inside the Nervegear will discharge a signal into your skull. This will destroy your brain and end your life.  **

‘That - that can’t be true, can it?’ Harry asks instantly, as soon as he’d absorbed what he’d read. Dudley looked - he looked _devastated_ and without words, Harry understood that this was no sick hoax.

‘There’s this - t-this transmitter inside the Nervegear. The EU nearly banned it because of - without this safety protocol, it’s - it’s like a microwave. If that was disabled…’ Dudley stutters. Harry had never seen Dudley look like this before; with dawning realisation of a terror right over the horizon. Or maybe he had, what felt like a life time ago when dementors had interrupted the flow of Dudley’s life. 

Harry couldn’t swallow but he could feel the beat of his heart, saw how his vision was palpitating as he stares at his cousin. ‘But…Aunt Petunia will be able to unplug us, right?’ 

Slowly, Dudley shook his head. ‘The Nervegear has an internal battery. It was just a recommendation to keep the headset plugged in.’ 

Harry’s eyes widen. The words didn’t quite…reach. They in fact seemed to echo, emptily. He could not truly find their meaning as a spark lit, flickered in the back of mind. It would not come forward.  

> ** Despite the warning I sent to the authorities, families and friends have already attempted removing the Nervegear. An unfortunate decision, to say the least. **

_Unfortunate?_

A cold fury ignites in his belly. Something that Harry had grown familiar with recognising, with _smothering_ until he barely feels it at all. It hadn’t been needed, had made him reckless. It had been one of the first thing to change. _Unfortunate?!_

> ** As a result Aincrad has two-hundred and thirteen less players than when it began. **

_Two-hundred and thirteen?_ Harry’s head screamed. The feeling of his legs turning to jelly wasn’t quite right, like it didn’t translate like the words on the screen but Harry was surprised that he could sense that sort of thing at all. Is that why the range of feeling was so intense? To give this despicable person more to _play with?_

And if that were true - if parents and friends and _whoever_ were waking up to the realisation that one of their loved one’s was stuck, and tried to remove the Nervegear - if that were real… The Dursley’s don’t listen to anyone, even if it was to their own detriment. They always thought they were _better._ Now, if this was happening -

Oh. Oh, _Merlin._ He’d survived his so-called childhood and Dumbledore’s manipulations. He’d made it out the other side of a _war,_ and he’d thought - stupidly - that things had been settling down. That Harry might be able to move onto something halfway normal. And now _this?_ A non-magical game? The Malfoy’s will be laughing over his grave. 

> ** They’ve been deleted from both Aincrad and the real world. **

_“Deleted”?_ Harry thought. _How…_ clinical, _how detached._

His eyes flickered from the translator’s screen to Kayaba and his jaw almost dropped when he saw the holo-screens encircling the avatar. _Sweet Mother Magic._ Each display presented news articles and TV footage, all from around the world highlights.

> **As you can see, international media outlets now have around the clock coverage of the events occurring around SAO. Deaths included. Congratulations, you’ve all made it to celebrity status until the world moves on and shifts its focus onto something else.Twenty-four hour news cycle and all that, you’ll understand.  **

‘What time is it back home?’ Harry finds himself asking, mind twisting in a hundred different directions. Kayaba’s cynicism barely touches the sides. It said a lot about Kayaba’s mind that he thought that this wouldn’t be a pressing issue for long, that this could be swept away.

Dudley’s response is automatic. ‘Two. About two in the morning…’ 

Two. Petunia wouldn’t be up at this hour. Harry had hours to prepare - to do something for Dudley if plugs were pulled, because his aunt would start with him; wouldn’t risk her “ikle Dudder’s”. She’d start with Harry if Petunia didn’t panic.

> ** At this point, with all attempts to remove the Nervegear unsuccessful, it’s safe to assume that the chances that the _geniuses_ who will be drafted to free you, Players’ of Aincrad, figuring out a war to disarm the Nervegears are slim. Minimal at best.  **

 Harry was oddly reminded of Dumbledore, how that man would talk to him in such a fashion that it became easy enough to see what the man was pushing for. Harry’d heard this type of acceptance speech before. It was not new to Harry. 

> ** I hope this brings you comfort as you forget your previous lives and move forward here, in Aincrad.  **

 ‘Comfort?’ Harry echoes dully. 

> ** As now official players of Aincrad, there are rules you must remember if you wish to survive. The first being the most important: there is no longer a way to revive someone. Once your life points hit zero, you will die and you will stay dead. **

  _No,_ Harry thinks. 

> ** Your physical body will also be killed. The system will delete you and the Nervegear will simultaneously destroy your brain. I would suggest to avoid this, or not. How you play with your life is entirely up to you. If you wish to end it early than the choice is yours to make. **

  _NO!_

  _No -_

  _no._ Harry didn’t want another bloodbath - couldn’t stand to be apart of anymore death. He’d already seen too much, participated in one too many. There was already so much destruction that could laid at his feet, attached to his name. 

> **You are able to live any way you wish. Aincrad will accommodate you.  **

Live? In a _game?_   

> ** If you wish to leave then there is one thing you must do: an achievement you must reach. Clear the game.  **

The letters Harry were reading was cold and unemotional and were translated from a cold, unemotional voice. It was - weird. Voldemort had never been so impassive. Not one character Harry had met had ever been so unexpressive before, with this air of nonchalance and mock coyness. 

> ** Right now, we’re located on the first floor; the lowest level of Aincrad. To advance you must fight your way through the floor dungeon and defeat the boss. When you defeat the boss on the one-hundredth floor, you will clear the game. **

_One-hundred floors?!_ But - but that would take so much time! What would happen to their bodies while they were stuck here? What would - what would happen to Harry’s magic? What if - what if his magic short circuited the Nervegear? In the same room as Dudley no less.

> ** Clear the game and you will be free of Aincrad. You will reach the next stage of enlightenment. **

 ‘What’re we going to do?’ Dudley asks amongst the other players who were quietly talking to each other, trying to make sense of this new reality. 

> ** To make the experience at Aincrad truer to yourselves, I’ve left a present for each of you in your item storage. Please, do have a look. **

Without thought, Harry opened his menu; heard everyone else doing the same as he fumbled clumsily to his storage and the one new item inside.

> ** Mirror  **

_Cute._ Harry blinked, thinking rather despondently. _What was this supposed to do? Show us our souls?_  

Really, Harry should have known better than to select the mirror. Not a second after he had pressed the item button, a handheld mirror was falling into his open palm. Automatically, he looked into it and saw the reflection of his avatar he’d created. The avatar he hadn’t been at all bothered with; didn’t care what it looked like and just ended up playing around with.

He - he regretted that, now. Harry was going to die with a face that wasn’t his own.  Like Voldemort. 

The more he looked at himself, the less Harry wanted to see and was just averting his gaze when he lit up like a firework gone wrong. Harry blinked, disoriented as the world slowly slotted back into place from the flash. When his vision was back, things seemed - different?

 ‘Harry?’ Dudley asks lowly and the sound of Harry’s name, is enough to turn his head away from the bewilderment surrounding them. When he glances up he is confronted with strawberry blond hair, blue eyes and the strong bone structure Harry had grown to know over the past months. The muscled body encompassing Harry was all so - _Dudley._

‘You - ’ Harry’s breath hitches and registers rather slowly that he was shorter than before. He’d made his avatar a bit taller. ‘We look like ourselves,’ he says, muddled and alarmed. He stares at his cousin, looks around to the other player’s who have changed and whose ID gauges he could no longer see. “Decha’s” was the only one visible in his sight now, his information right under Harry’s. 

‘How?’ Harry quietly demands. ‘How is this possible?’ 

Dudley seems to think about it for a moment before something disturbed lights his face. ‘You remember that startup scan you had to do? When we were registering your Nervegear you had to put the headset on, visor down and wait for the light to turn on?’ 

Harry frowns because, yes, he vaguely remembered that but it hadn’t seemed too important so he hadn’t paid it that much attention. ‘The manual said that it was motion capture; to allow the avatar facial movements but…’ Dudley trails off, jaw tensing. ‘It’d be easy enough to install a camera to see what we looked like.’ 

Harry looks down at himself. ‘And my body? These look like my measurements.’ 

‘That time you had to rub yourself down? You had to touch different points of your body when the visor told you to?’ Dudley reminds him with a manic energy of realisation. ‘I thought it was a calibration-thing, but….it could’ve been gathering heights and body types.’ 

Harry finds himself staring of Dudley’s terrified face. _But…why?_ he finds himself thinking. Kayaba’s words have all been strange; off. Their agenda for doing this - Harry couldn’t imagine and they wanted the players’ to have their faces? For what purpose? 

‘This doesn’t make sense,’ Harry states to Dudley. Something was very wrong here, aside from just about everything. Motive was missing.  

> ** You may be wondering why a developer of SAO do this? Ultimately, my goal was a simple one: to control the fate of the world. **

  _To play God?_ Harry thought in disgust. 

> ** I am sure once you have completed my game, that you will see SAO’s purpose - as well as your own. **

Two-handed and thirteen innocent people were already _dead!_ Did this maniac not understand what that _meant?!_ How could _anything_ be worth that? This sounded like some of Dumbledore’s BS where he’d talk about how the ends justified the means, when it never _ever_ did. The loss of life was nothing to _contemplate._

> ** I fear I’ve taken up enough time. With the end of my speech marks the true beginning of SAO. Players, I wish you the best of luck.  **

Like the mist that steamed from his hood, Kayaba’s body simply dissolved until the robes emptied and the clothe liquified back into blood, which seeped back into the gaps of the ceiling that had blocked out the sky. With little more than a blink, the red dome was gone and the tranquil sunset was returned to normal.

In the aftermath of Kayaba’s disappearance, there was an unnatural stillness amongst so many. A tense silence of a world made up of an elastic band pull taunt. There was a build up of anticipation, players’ waiting to be told that this was all a joke, a trick but nothing was forthcoming. 

The longer the silence stretched out into Aincrad, the more it seemed to dawn on people the new circumstance they found themselves in. Hysteria broke out from the cry of a single fracture, the break of one person’s composure. Chaos snapped the false calmness as Harry was soon pushed further into Dudley’s hollow chest as players start to panic. Suddenly transported into what felt like the London tubes at rush hour, Harry grabbed a tighter hold of Dudley to ensure they didn’t get separated. 

There was shouting and screaming and crying as people tried to escape from the square, a space too small for so many of them. Harry realised then, that this wasn’t - this wasn’t good. Even if they all spoke the same language, were all from the same country, there would be no more talking today. These players were past rationale and who was Harry to them anyway?He didn’t have any influence here and he was very out of his element. 

Taking an elbow to the gut - barely acknowledging the warning popup, that blinked between him and the player who was already moving on. _We have to move,_ Harry thinks. They couldn’t stay here. He’d witnessed mass panic before, in Hogwarts, during the war when the werewolves invaded. It hadn’t been pretty and they’d ended up losing half the number from falling down the enchanted staircases, than they did to the actual wolves.

Harry takes Dudley’s hand in his own and pulls. Harry didn’t know if he were stronger here but Dudley jerks forward to follow Harry’s direction, as he forces them through players’ too out of it to be paying proper attention to their surroundings. He flicks open his menu and finds the map quick enough - had seen Dudley do it a few times not to get lost. 

Starting City was obviously the dot in the centre of floor one and it didn’t take much to guess he was the pulsing smaller indicator. So - the closet landmark would take them…south-west. South-east looked like the better choice long term; the landmass was larger but it was further from Starting City, and Harry didn’t want to take any risks on so soon. Not with Dudley.

‘Har- _Choice!’_ Dudley’s stutter-start from behind was enough to jolt Harry out of the map and pay attention to the cousin he was trying to pull away from the others. ‘What are you doing? Where are we _going?!’_

Harry could feel his feet slapping against the floor, the gravity light as he bounded up and down at their speed. There was no limp, no pain, no muscle strain that would have been there if this were real. His bum leg wouldn’t be able to take this kind go exercise. It was an unsettling reminder that he was not himself. 

He looked over his shoulder at his cousin who wasn’t struggling to keep up, who wasn’t out of breath. ‘We can’t stay here; there’re too many people,’ Harry explains as he tries to tighten his grip on Dudley only to discover he couldn’t. He is vehement and louder than he would have liked but with all the noise, he could barely hear himself. ‘Even if we _don’t_ get trampled, panic makes people violent.’ 

‘That’s not how SAO works!’ Dudley replies without thought, appearing to be in shock. ‘People can’t just - start a fight. Towns are safe-zones, you can’t lose HP in them. You’d have to demand a duel or an attack would get a Cardinal Warning!’ 

Harry didn’t know what that meant and right now he didn’t _care._ They were _not staying here._ Apart from the market, it just seemed that this area was mostly housing and the monsters - the mods, or whatever Dudley called them were really weak and Harry didn’t know how else to get stronger. Trapping themselves here seemed like an awful idea.

Kayaba wanted them to clear this game, moving forward seemed to be the only way to achieve that. Staying here, right at the start wouldn’t do them any good. They had to - to get away. 

‘I don’t think the - the _“Cardinal,”_ cares about our safety right now!’ Harry calls back. Dudley’s face takes on a bit of an ill tinge, expression spasming. ‘I know you’re the expert on games, Dud - _De.’_ Harry corrects himself, slowing his gait as they reach an empty alley. A nickname, he could compromise with. A bit of both worlds. 

‘Harry.’ 

‘And I’ll listen to all of your instructions,’ Harry promised. ‘But I’m the expert at _staying alive_ and until your mum gets up, I’m going to protect you but you’ve got to _let me._ Understand?’ 

The echoes of distress and horror are a flutter in the distance, leaving Harry and Dudley on the edge of that torment and the dangerous silence in front of them. Harry couldn’t do anything about that; had learnt the hard way that he couldn’t save everyone. Anarchy was like a wild fire, water and depriving it of fuel were more likely it further infuriate it than aid snuffing it out. It had to burn itself out.

But Harry was used to this; was used to putting his life on the line. Death was a friend, battle a distant relative with the monster he came a twin. He knew this game; knew how to handle this. He’d done it before.

He couldn’t. Had to. Harry had to be able to do this agin. 

‘Okay,’ Dudley utters eventually, there is something inscrutable about his face. Something - sad, maybe as he looks at Harry, ‘…you really will be my bodyguard, after all…huh?’ 

‘Even your mum can be right, sometimes,’ Harry answers with as much humour as he can because Dudley can’t be panicked here. Fear - fear was fine. Fear kept a person fast, kept them on-guard and ready, but they needed their wits about them and panic was a liability.

Dudley’s eyes - so very human and so very vulnerable, are glittering but they meet Harry straight on. Harry - Harry remembers then, his mum crying, pleading but staring Voldemort straight in the eyes as he killed her. Harry remembers how scared but unwavering she’d been, just twenty-one when she’d died.

‘Together, then,’ Dudley says with a shaky voice as he steps forward so that they’re side by side. ‘Lead the way, Choice.’ 

They held each other’s gaze and for the first time, they came to an understanding. Harry nodded, slow and drawn out as he turned to run, not so much carrying Dudley with him now but pulling themselves along. With both of them running as fast as they could while Harry navigated them with his map.

If this was a game it only meant that Harry needed to learn the rules. He was used to restrictions, it wouldn’t take much to do it again. Doing things here were real enough, if without the same levity that underpinned the real world. He’d noticed that quickly while they’d been fighting those boars. It made things…easier.

Harry hadn’t been able to feel anything when his staff ran through the creatures - the mobs here, nothing but a light pressure that accumulated behind his arms like that small thing was meant to represent the creatures’ mass. There’d been no _weight._ It had been like a warn knife through butter; little resistance and as easy as breathing. So very…easy.  

It would be like living through clingfilm, if Harry had to keep destroying things in order to level up - to get stronger to move up the floors. And that - that wasn’t as comforting as people may think it would be.

The first time he’d held a physically demanding weapon, he’d been twelve-years-old and Gryffindor’s sword had almost been too much for Harry. His young hands had griped hold of the gold hilt, pulling it free from the ratty, old Sorting Hat. Using it, he’d had to manage his entire body to thrust it forward, to push the blade through the basilisk’s jaw; its tough gum, its rock hard brain and its steel skull. Its mammoth head had twitched when Harry had pierced through and his body had shook with it. 

Harry’d barely been sixteen when Neville - brave, dependable Neville (who’d barely _blinked_ at Harry, plastered with blood and covered with ash because that boy always so underestimated but knew sacrifice few did from the first war) threw him Gryffindor’s sword, he’d drive it home once more. On his knees, weakened from another Kill Curse and shaking like a newborn lamb, Harry had nothing to give but the air in his lungs before he’d scrambled for that weapon. 

With that sword, he’d had hope. It’d been enough to rekindle enough fire for him to penetrate through robe and skin, through a human’s feeble chest-plate and Voldemort’s blackened heart.

Hot blood had sprayed over Harry and he’d forced himself to stay firm, not to waver, as he stared into Voldemort’s titian eyes, and be _strong_ enough to watch the _life_ leave them. 

Weapons were not meant to be easy to use. Destroying things was not meant to be simple. Dumbledore thought he was reckless and thoughtless. Gryffindor though he was, however, Harry was not nor had he ever been _heedless._  

Because it was too easy to use these weapons and this was a new life, but Dudley was here with him and Harry had lost a lot, had given up the idea of protecting the few for the lot. Here - Harry couldn’t do it again here. Wouldn’t be able to, anyway. 

On his blood, his sanity - his _magic,_ so be it, this would not be another Battle of Hogwarts. 

Harry was not coming out of this alone. 


	4. Fearful Anticipation

 

* * *

**November 23rd, 2022**

* * *

 

It was dark and cool by the time the two of them had made it to the next town. The warmth of the day was gone which would have suited them both fine if it hadn’t complicated their journey. They were in the wrong time zone, anyway. It was a relief when they had reached Horunka and could follow the dimly lit streets, and not have to stumble along the forrest with nothing but the glow from the map screen and the moon. 

The first thing of note, really, was how much smaller Horunka was to Starting City. It was an observation made by a glance but it was obvious enough. Even exhausted, and all but falling into the first Inn they saw.  

They’d left Starting City at roughly half past two in the morning and had been travelling since. Dudley had been complaining that there would usually be transport, but that had obviously been taken out of the official release and Transport Crystals could only take you to places you’d already been, so they were useless as of now. 

That had left them journeying through the Forest Region for a good two hours, as soon as they’d made it out of the city district and they were swarmed over with mods. Just Boars and Wolves; easy enough to clear as they moved, especially after the slaughter they’d taken part in before everything had been turned on its head.

‘Just keep going,’ Dudley had said, weary and drooping as they’d continued forward. ‘I’ve read forums about the scope of the first floor. It’s big, Choice, the biggest floor in SAO. We’ll be walking for awhile.’

‘We could stop if you’re tired, I don’t mind,’ Harry had responded despite his determination to get out of the open and somewhere more secure.

Dudley had shaken his head. ‘We can’t stay here. Never rest somewhere that isn’t a Safe-Zone. We’re fair game out here, like any mod or NPC.’

Uneasily, they’d continued. The entrance of the Deep Forest was noticeably overgrown and wild. It’d been possible to look too far inside, the distant scenery was clouded and dark. ‘We could try to go around it?’ Harry’d suggested, hesitant to put his trust in an area so foreboding.

‘No. You remember that huge arse castle wall?’ 

‘Sure, it was hard to miss,’ Harry’d responded.

‘Well, it’s meant to cut through the first floor in a semi-circle,’ Dudley explains roughly. ‘Someone posted that it stops at the beginning of the Labyrinth but it also means that there’s only one way in and out of Starting City on foot.’ 

Glancing back to the map, Harry saw the problem. ‘They’re herding us.’

Dudley shrugged. ‘It’s common in games; for the devs to make barriers to make sure players go the right ways. It ensures that players are levelling up or not reaching areas before they’re meant to get there. It’s all part of level design.’ 

Harry sighed but they continued their trek through the Deep Forest as Harry made mental notes of the area, the monsters that spawned and tried to remember attack patterns. The later it got, the slower they’d become. Harry had been trained to fight and respond on no sleep and in poor conditions but Dudley was just a teenager, who was tired and stressed. 

By the time the trees were receding back and the terrain grew flatter, they were out of Potions and Dudley was dragging his feet. Seeing the City Wall again was enough to alleviate their strain. It took another two hours to finally reach the drawbridge with a plaque fixed to the side with the name “Horunka” engraved onto it. 

Horunka wasn’t a built up city like Starting, it was more akin to a town - or a settlement. Buildings were dotted around and the streets and alleys had no real organisation to them. The Inn was, _thankfully,_ one of the first things they came across. 

The hanging sign outside the stone inn - very Tudor in fashion, read: The Petite Chateaux. Harry’s primary school level French was about enough to translate that: _the little castle_. Either way, the building held all the charm of a village cottage with plant boxes in the windows, climbing vines decorating the walls and a cute painted door. It was also easy enough to guess what it was. 

With Dudley close to falling over, Harry stood awkwardly in front of the door, not quite sure what to do when a hand fell onto his shoulder. ‘For public buildings, you’re just meant to press your hand against it and it’s meant to open,’ Dudley said, face flat and tight as he looked at Harry. ‘If you want to get access to a player’s room or dwelling, then you knock.’ 

Harry nods but he’s slow to extend his hand; SAO has used up his trust and he wasn’t sure of its intentions anymore. If he doesn’t, though, Dudley probably _will_ so he places his palm to the wood. His thought is not about how the door creaks open, but that the texture is wrong; untreated wood that has simply been painted over should have granules and groves. This had nothing. Just a strangely flat surface. It hadn’t been given the same attention as his staff or the grass, or Dudley’s - everything.

Harry lowers his arm in discomfort, fingers curling into a fist as he enters the establishment with Dudley by his side. They’re welcomed into a rustic looking pub, with a rounded counter, coasters running along the top and connected pumps that’d look at home in the heart of England, rustic but homely. Standing behind the bar was a woman with a cursor hovering above her head.

She drew Harry’s attention instantly. The woman was in her early to mid-twenties, looking unnaturally stiff with a distant expression made up on her face, completed with a vague smile. Seeing her dress, with an apron tired around her waist, blonde hair kept out of her way with a scarf, had Harry thinking back in history. 

Angelo Saxons, Maybe? Whatever, it’d been a long time since Harry had thought about his studies in primary school and it probably didn’t matter much. ‘Um…’ Harry tried to begin and then realised that it didn’t look like this woman was breathing. ‘Excuse me?’ 

With speed that had Harry stepping back into Dudley, she turned to look at him, blinking as if just waking up from a dream. ‘Choice?’ Dudley says in askance but her big eyes are fixed on Harry and it was unnerving him. 

‘Hello me lovelies!’ she greets after a pause, mouth stiff for a moment before she livens up. ‘I’d be Madame Rosalie. What cann’ee do fer youse?’ 

‘Er…’ Harry falters.

‘She’s an NPC, Choice. Don’t worry, she’s fine,’ Dudley said measuredly.

Harry blinks and then is forced to remember the “NPC’s” that occupied a few of Dudley’s other games but they hadn’t - they hadn’t reacted like _her._ Well, he could ask Dudley about it later. ‘Me and my - friend, would like a room,’ Harry says hopefully. ‘Please,’ he adds on as an afterthought. He doesn’t feel particularly polite after the day he’d had.

Madame Rosalie blinks at the both of them. ‘For me double that’d be ten Cor ah piece ah night. Interested?’ 

Harry was preparing a verbal answer. He knew they had enough money with the mods they’d killed throughout the day, but he was interrupted when a screen popped up in front of him. 

> ** The Petite Chateaux Double Room Is Now Available.  **
> 
> ** Ten Cor Per Night **
> 
> ** Do You Accept?  **
> 
> ** [O] [X] **

Harry sighed and glance to the side to see the same window in front of Dudley. He had a feeling that this would get very tiring, very quickly. Despite this, he pressed the accept button. A key was tumbling into his hand not a moment later.

Madame Rosalie nodded. ‘Pleasuah doin’ business wit’ yer.’ She winks, smiling wide as she gestures to the door near the back of the pub, not far from the edge of the counter. ‘Yer be going up them stairs tah yer room.’

Harry didn’t feel particularly welcome as he thanked Madame Rosalie and walked towards to door, peering up it to find a narrow, rickety staircase, wooden and steep. He glanced to Dudley who shrugged but gently pushed him forward. 

It was easy enough to climb with two working legs even if every step Harry felt like he was about to fall through the rotting panelling. Once they were at the top, they went a long a hallway of doors. Examining his room key, and seeing a number “5” on the small plank attached, it was easy enough to find which one was theirs.

Inserting the key into the doorknob of room number five, Harry needn’t even turn it before the door started to pull away from him. He couldn’t help but tense, finding it a little ominous. Dudley’s hand was back before he had the chance to pause for long. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he reassured tiredly. ‘Security may seem a bit lax but things can’t be stolen in SAO, you have to transfer things over through your menu to hand something over. It’s safe.’ 

Harry nodded and stepped through. There is a gaslight Dudley turns on through the game’s system, though Harry’s pretty sure that light is in the wrong era. Not like it mattered, SAO was made by a Japanese company who was probably going for aesthetic rather than historically accuracy.

Near the front door that closed behind them was another which - luckily - turned out to be a bathroom. Harry didn’t know how their bladder functions were made to work here, but having to go in an outdoor bathroom would be terrible. The addition of a shower, however haphazard the plumbing appeared, was also a relief. 

Dudley is more concerned with getting on a mattress and walks past Harry, to collapse on one of the twin beds. It was more a cot than anything, but it was better than nothing and Harry had grown used to a floor.

‘Don’t just stand there, bro,’ Dudley murmurs into his pillow. 

Harry plonks himself down heavily on the bed opposite Dudley’s. ‘De?’ 

‘Hm?’ Dudley voice is muffled, exhausted.

‘You need to stay awake a bit longer, De,’ Harry says, sleepy himself as he watches the lump Dudley has become. 

‘ _Why?’_ Dudley groans.

Harry buries any guilt he might feel at keeping Dudley awake. This is quite _literally_ a matter of life and death at the minute. ‘I know it’s late and that you’re late but time’s a resource we can’t be sure we have. You can sleep in a minute, I promise.’ 

 Dudley blew out a fatigued breath and pushed himself into a sitting position. 

* * *

_Typical_ , Dudley thinks as he forces himself to sit rather than sink into his admittedly uncomfortable bed. ‘What’s this about? Cuz I’m honestly still processing the whole thing.’ Everything felt so…surreal. Like it was meant to be normal but the log out button was gone and Dudley wasn’t brave enough to think that Kayaba’s words had been a lie. 

‘It’s…a bit of a shock,’ Harry mutters as he glances down to the hands in his lap. The lines under his eyes look like they’ve been etched in with a hammer and his skin looks unhealthy in the low lights. 

Dudley snorts. ‘That’s a bit of an understatement,’ he retorts dryly. ‘Harry -’

‘I think you - we need to get our heads on straight,’ Harry cuts in lowly. There’s a strain about him that has’t been so restrictive since that first day, when Dudley had opened the door to him and that wizard that had left him. ‘Just…’

‘Okay, okay,’ Dudley concedes. He blows out a fatigued breath as he forces himself to sit up. ‘Get on with it though, will you? Before I regret listening you.’ 

Harry grins weakly, pressing his hands into his thighs. ‘You would regardless. Are you…’ He hesitates, watching him, assessing. ‘No, that’d be a stupid question. You be sure, no matter what, to keep your head, okay?’

_‘What’s that head for, kid? Decoration? If you want to last in the ring, keep it screwed on. You can’t keep rushing in half-cocked,’_ coach had said once upon a time but it’d taken more than that before Dudley had started to listen.Here it was again. ‘Sure, I get it,’ Dudley responds. ‘But -' 

‘No, that’s lesson one: control your thoughts, don’t let them control you. Keep your calm.’ 

‘What, of your survival tips?’ Dudley’s not surprised per se. He’d seen that look in Harry’s eyes before, however long ago it were. ‘Though ain’t something I expected to come outta your mouth.’

‘Some things have to change.’ The statement was flat, seemed overly candid while being not quite right. ‘You mentioned when we were leaving Starting how the game wouldn’t let people attack others…could you, explain? How sure are you of that?’ 

‘Ah…’ Dudley thinks of swallowing on reflex but there isn’t a mechanic for that without eating involved. ‘So, for the game to run there’s all these systems. The main system is called the Cardinal system. It manages resources, and processes and events and stuff.’

‘And it would keep players from attacking one another?’ Harry asks dubiously. 

Dudley shakes his head. ‘No, it can’t like…control players. It just stops actions from taking effort. Like, if I were to try and hit you right now, even if I were ta hit you, the Cardinal wouldn’t allow you to take any damage. Because we’re in a Safe Zone.’ 

‘…you’re sure that, that those rules the Cardinal insists on are in place?’ The question is an uncomfortable one and a bubble of fear begins to form. 

‘…I guess not but…it wouldn’t make any sense for the Cardinal to be disabled. Besides, remember when that guy backed into you? That warning that popped up after? That was the Cardinal System.’

‘So…there _are_ rules,’ Harry states. ‘And you know them?’ 

‘Well, mostly. I guess.’ Dudley shrugs. ‘I mean, I read a tonne of forums to get an edge but the betas didn’t get that far, only reached like, Floor Ten. I think. So, it’s not like there was that much information and some of it I had to use Google to translate. So…’ 

‘Right, but you’d know more than most. You’re not going into this blind?’ Harry’s insistence on this is a bit strange but Dudley supposes he’s not wrong. 

‘I guess not.’ He pauses and tries to understand what’s creased Harry’s brow. ‘…and neither are you.’ 

Harry’s smile is fractured. ‘I’m the bodyguard here.’ 

Dudley frowns. ‘I…don’t want you to take that too seriously.’ Not now. He wouldn’t have Harry doing anything stupid now. Not with so much at stake. Dudley wouldn’t be able to live with himself if anything happened. ‘We’re both in this together.’

Harry continues to smile. ‘Together.’ That’s an agreement but…why doesn’t it sound like one? 

Dudley huffs. ‘We’ll probably need to think about making a Guild. Maybe.’ He decides to allow the subject to change. Bringing something up that’d require some contemplation. ‘Safety in numbers and all that.’ 

Harry’s face turns into something more thoughtful as he considers that. ‘It - yeah.’ He inclines his head carefully. ‘…yeah, that….we’ll need more players, right?’ 

‘The party’s enough for now.’ 

‘So…a guild later, but sooner…what do - we need to do?’ Harry enquires.

‘Ah. Er…I mean, levelling up and the - the quests?’ Dudley suggests hazily, because he’s so exhausted he can almost sense how heavy his eyes are. 

‘Quests,’ Harry repeats. ’They’ll be like the type of thing I’ve done before, in other games?’ 

Dudley nods in confirmation. ‘Pretty much, yeah. We can earn rewards and there’s more chance for quickly earning SP.’ 

‘Alright,’ Harry says in agreement. ‘Alright, we’ll try that. When - we wake up.’ 

There was something halting about the way Harry spoke, something that made a thrum of worry hit Dudley. There was something that Dudley wasn’t getting. That hadn’t clicked like it had for Harry, it seemed. ‘So…unless you want to talk about the marriage system, are we done? Can I sleep or is there something else?’

‘M-marriage system?’ Harry stuttered as his eyes widened. The green of his eyes weren’t quite the same but maybe that was the lighting. It was still better than having to go through this with a cousin that had changed his eyes to purple. Dudley preferred Harry looking like himself. 

And despite the situation, Dudley finds himself snorting. ‘What, commitment not for you, Wizard?’ The pigment of Harry’s skin reddened on his cheeks but went nowhere near his neck, like how he usually blushed. An oversight, Dudley supposedly numbly. 

‘But - why?’ Harry asks. 

‘Dude, this is a _role-playing_ game. It’s meant to be as realistic as possible to that. Besides, there are advantages to marrying someone in-game.’ Dudley gestured dismissively. He’d gotten married once, to an online friend but it hadn’t ended all that well and Harry probably didn’t need to hear about that.

‘ _Advantages,_ De. Your mum will be so disappointed,’ Harry teases with a weak grin pulling at one side of his face. 

‘Like I said, SAO is _very_ realistic.’ 

Harry blinks as he picks up on at what Dudley is hinting at. Boarding school did that to a bloke. ‘What, really?’ The shock on Harry’s face was good enough to _frame_ and Dudley couldn’t quite hide the chortle pushing at the back of his throat. ‘Are you pulling my leg? _De?!’_

Dudley smirked and waited a moment until he raised his hands in defence when Harry picked up his pillow and started to threaten him with it. ‘Alright, alright. Don’t get your virginal nickers in a twist.’ Harry took that the wrong way and sighed in relief and Dudley couldn’t have that. ‘With your Moral Code enabled, you can enjoy the censorship to your innocence hearts content.’ 

Harry’s face is a shade of horrified that Dudley hadn’t had the pleasure to see before. ‘W-wha-?’

‘Oh don’t look so worried,’ Dudley says in reassurance even if he’s amused. 

‘I…don’t get it. Can players _really_ -?’

‘Yeah, it absolutely _killed_ the age rating but it’s not like players _have_ to. And no one can force anyone to either.’ Dudley said that part more seriously as assault had been a worry that had popped up often enough. ‘Really, though. Don’t go worrying about it. I mean, you’re sixteen so you _can_ and it’d be no one’s business -’

‘So…the Moral Code is independent from the marriage system?’ Harry asks in confusion. 

Dudley’s head tilts. ‘Well, yeah. Sex and marriage aren’t exclusive in real life, why would they make it like that here?’

‘Right.’ Harry shakes his head. ‘Right, sorry. Of course. I’ve gotten distracted.’ 

‘Aww, look at you,’ Dudley coos, delighted with how flustered Harry’s become. ‘Don’t worry, bro. I’ll make sure to check out all your…prospects. Gotta do my due diligence as your big cousin.’ 

Harry makes a show of rolling his eyes. ‘There won’t be _any_ “prospects.”’The smile was still there and the tone was off. ‘Can we get back on track?’

Dudley’s more positive expression falls. ‘Sorry,’ he finds himself apologising. Had he crossed a line? Plodded against something sore? Something more exposed than the rest of Harry’s guarded vulnerabilities. ‘You’re right. I just - Sorry. I’m…this isn’t…It hasn’t quite settled in yet, ya know? I am - I _will_ take this seriously. But, I’ve never…’ 

‘This isn’t your typical Tuesday,’ Harry acknowledges as he looks upon Dudley in that way of his. It wasn’t unkind. But not a lot about Harry was. 

'N-no. No,’ Dudley takes a breath, vaguely feels it catching at the back of his throat - his physical throat. ‘It’s…not the type of thing that - shit, I’m…sorry. It’s just that, outside of _you._ Well, you’re the closest thing to - fiction I’ve come to. I didn’t expect…’ 

Harry’s face became kind of stiff. His cousin, who was only here cuz Dudley had had this grand idea. ‘I can’t believe this has happened. I can’t…I’m so sorry your stuck here too,’ he finally manages to get out. In the Square, with Harry in his arms as he held on through each and every revelation the avatar had brought down on their heads, all Dudley could feel was numb. 

Now, that was hours in the distance but didn’t feel any more real. Pretending it wasn’t though, would probably get Dudley killed and he’d rather stay alive.

‘What?’ Harry blinks at him, surprised at the apologise and Dudley tries not to let that get to him. 

‘Sorry, for dragging you into this. It’s - well. You know.’ Dudley gestures weakly. ‘You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me, I should have tried harder to talk you out of it when you’d started to be stubborn about it. It’s not like you cared all that much about gaming.’ 

Harry’d had polite tolerance for most of what Dudley had wanted him to do and would learn what Dudley tried to teach him. ‘What’re you talking about, De? I didn’t mind doing things with you and this - this isn’t _your_ fault.’ 

‘Well, it’s not _yours_ either,’ Dudley finds himself snapping. ‘I, just - look, can I level with you?’

‘You can if that wasn’t a pun,’ Harry responds before he sighs. He droops forward, hands pushing through his hair. Dudley barely pays the ruffling stands any heed. ‘Please, you know I’d prefer it.’ 

‘I know I gave you the third degree about sharing personal information but we’re alone now and I need - I thought that, this would be… I wanted you to play SAO cuz I was thinking that it’d help.’ Dudley tries not to fidget or squirm as Harry watches him. 

‘Help with _what_?’ Harry’s face has this expressionless mask on again but Dudley can sense the tension. 

Dudley exhales quietly. ‘With - with your…stuff, from the war.’ He tries to be delicate but he feels like a bull in a china shop. ‘I thought that being somewhere else, might…help. But, it’s not like that anymore. and, I need to know - will you be okay? Okay with… _this?’_

Harry looked up from the bed duvet he’d been fiddling with. Dudley half wishes he hadn’t. ‘What do you mean?’ 

‘Well, it’ll be dangerous, won’t it? And…’ Dudley fought for the right words. ‘I know you’re strong, Harry. I know that, even if I’ve just introduced you to gaming but - that’s not the problem. I just…need to know, okay? Will you be okay?’ 

PTSD was really serious, Scott had made sure that Dudley got that and this idea had gone very wrong. ‘Will I be okay?’ Harry repeated and before Dudley could say another word, asked: ‘why?’

Dudley began to get a sinking feeling but restrained himself from reaching forward. He’d learnt not 

to when Harry's shoulders became drawn like this. ‘Look, I don’t want to start a fight, not now.’ Especially _not now._ ‘Look, I’m sorry - I’m sorry. It’s nonna my business. We can - there’s still stuff I can tell you about. Like - like, career paths or - duels, -‘ Dudley tries desperately to backtrack, not wanting to work Harry up. This conversation could always come later, but not if they had a tiff.

Harry’s not having it though and his expression is already closing off. ‘What did you mean.’ 

Dudley shifts. ‘look.’ He raises his hands in a “I’m harmless”. He wasn’t sure how well it worked. ‘I don’t want to start a fight - not now.’ _Especially not now._ ‘I’m just - I’m just worried about you. You haven’t been…right, since, well, you know.’ 

It was like a door door slamming shut as everything about Harry straightens up; tenses in a imperceivable way.His cousin gets up to rid the room of light and Dudley has to sigh. ‘Harry… Can’t you just let me - _try_ to be a good cousin?’ 

That stilled Harry for a moment who was navigating back to his bed by the dim light shining through the shutters. Harry eventually settles back on his bed without a glance in Dudley’s direction. ‘It might not matter, anyway,’ Harry whispers, voice stilted and devoid of inflexion. He methodically un-equipping everything but his basic clothing. 

‘In - probably, a couple more hours, Aunt Petunia will be up and the first thing she’ll do after making breakfast, is turn on the news,’ Harry states duly as his menu closes and the light it produces, vanishes. It left his expression indistinct. ‘And if that happens, she might just do you the favour of pulling my plug if you’re so worried about having to - party with me.’ 

 Dudley gets the vague sensation of going cold. Dudley hadn’t thought about that. Even after having all those articles thrust in their faces, Dudley _hadn’t even thought -_ but, his mum knew _nothing_ about technology, wouldn’t understand the consequence of trying to force the NerveGear off. She panicked too; neither of his parents were very good at keeping calm and thinking things through. 

‘So,’ Harry continued stiffly, ‘maybe, _if_ I survive to evening, we can assume I’m not going to be offed by your mother and _then_ we can talk about my mental capabilities.’ 

‘Harry -’

‘You have a good basis for survival here, you just need to keep your head and avoid heroics,’ Harry states like that’s advice he’d abide by. ‘Remember about what to do when you wake up.’ 

‘When _we -’_ Dudley attempted to insist but Harry was already curling upon his mattress, back to Dudley. 

‘Goodnight,’ Harry interrupts.

‘Arse,’ Dudley can’t help but hiss in frustration as he himself goes to remove his armour. ‘Fine, we won’t talk but _when_ we get through tomorrow _and_ onwards, _you_ \- you great, whooping prat - _will_ give me the courtesy of an honest “I’ fine, De,’ or an “I’m not fine, De.” Or so help me, I’ll - I’ll…well, I’ll do something!’ 

He closed his menu with a snap of his wrist and violently got into bed. Silence settled between them and it was tense as he tried to settle. He bit his lip but he could barely feel it. Everything was muted, suddenly so very fair away. Dudley forced his eyes closed even when his mind asked if he really wanted to; if it was safe to do so. 

It was wondering if he would wake up all on his own; left alone with the other players in SAO, in his do-or-die situation with an impossible goal. He could feel tears start to bite at him and he grit his teeth as he forced them away. He weren’t no girl and wasn’t about to start brawling. 

_Fuck,_ Dudley thinks as he listens to his cousin’s breathing as he starts to pray that he’ll wear it later today. If he woke up with it gone - 

Guilt crashed down around him, knowing that this would be all his fault; that if Harry died, it would be _completely_ his fault. Harry had lived through a _war,_ he couldn’t go out like this. It - it wouldn’t be fair. _Fuck._

‘You’re a scrawny prick with magic hands, playing hero,’ Dudley whispers harshly, from the back of his throat. ‘You’re too stubborn to let Mum off you and you too much of a good-two shoes to let me die here. You’re my bodyguard, you said so. You’re not going to leave me here.’ 

‘If something happens to me…’ is murmured back and Dudley almost thinks he’s hearing things. ‘If something happens to me, you _need_ to go on that Quest; the one you mentioned before. Go and get prepared and be strong.’ 

‘Not without you,’ Dudley says stubborn as his heartbeat kicks up a gear, because he honestly doesn’t know how to even _begin_ contemplating that. He’d fought in boxing matches but that was - contained, there was a ref and there wasn’t any real rick. Dudley wasn’t brave like Harry, he wasn’t strong either. 

‘Not without you.’ 

‘You might not have a choice.’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I feel like I need to mention that in my write of SAO there will be more game mechanics in this game that the anime scrapped or didn't seem to know existed. I really wanna flesh that out and other aspects that the anime just sort of ignored, like the real world issue this would course, therapy etc etc. It might end up being very heavy. Just a warning :P


	5. Day One

_“Breaking news this morning with nationwide reports of fatalities connected with the new Nervegear technology, that hit shelves in early November. The sole title, Sword Art Online launched late last night and was meant to be introducing the market to the first VRMMORPG of its type. Sources have confirmed that the headsets are electrocuting players when their avatar dies in-game, or when the headsets are removed._

_The prime minister has released a statement that this is deliberate programming to insight death, but motive is still unclear. It has been advised that if you are waking up to the broadcast and know someone using a Nervegear that you do not -_ do not - _take the device off. The technology is said to automatically short-circuit the player’s brain. I repeat: do not take the Nervegear off.”_

* * *

Petunia Dursley woke up to a slightly less than average day, her faithful husband snoring beside her with an almost perfect day of lounging ahead of her. “Slightly less” and “almost perfect” due to one smear on her lovely, normal life. Her nephew had returned to their home earlier this year and everything had changed since he had burdened their single spare bedroom, bringing the unnatural back into a house he should never have been brought to.

When the freaks had taken the boy, Petunia had been sure that she’d never see him again; that’d he’d leave her life much the same way he’d entered it. Without warning or invitation, and disturbing every normalcy that Petunia had managed to create int he meantime. It was very much like Lily’s lot, to care so little about a world they didn’t otherwise bother with. 

Those freaks couldn’t help but destroy everything they touched. They couldn’t seem to help themselves. The boy - _Harry_ , hadn’t meant anything to them, if he had they wouldn’t have left him with her. They would have left him with one of his godfathers, or found him another home that wanted him, that could bare to look at him. 

And every year after the boy got his Hogwarts letter, Petunia watched as they burdened her sister’s boy more and more until they decided to take him. With barely a word to the “family” they had left him to to look after and deal with, they _took him_ into conflict and terror. But Petunia knew their ways through the loss of a sister she’d cut out and tried to move on from. 

Petunia had lost her _parents_ during that first war, when their neighbourhood had been blown-up by those monsters while she was out. The incident had been blamed on extremists by the BBC, and they had been right, they had just gotten the breed wrong. 

The boy returned to a house Petunia had still been trying to make into a home after being forced to move. He’d looked like hell, and Petunia’s first thought was: _What have they done?_ When the boy had stood up and walked and couldn’t walk with any sense of efficiency, her stomach her coiled with age-old anger and a righteous sense of validation. 

Validation grown from watching her sister and nephew both being introduced into a world she’d never been good enough for, eyes full with nothing but wonder until the other shoe dropped. Until the freaks’ showed themselves for what they were underneath the draw of _being so much more special_ than perfectly normal people. 

They’d killed Lily without a second thought. Petunia mused often after getting Harry back that he’d have probably been better off. She heard him screaming at night, saw how he walked around like a ghost, watched his far away expression as he relived everything he had had to do. Petunia didn’t know what the boy had done for them; what the freaks had made him do but she could guess. 

The boy was quiet, turned passive like the fire that burnt in his chest, bright and ardent had been frozen. Now, it was like looking at his reflection, inverted and dull. Harry - he wasn’t the child that had been thrust into her life. 

One of the nights he had woken up, startled awake from terrors Petunia didn’t know, she’d followed him downstairs. Slid silently out of bed, wrapped her nightdress around herself and crept into the kitchen where Harry had pulled out a chair, a glass of water stood solidly on the table. It wasn’t unusual for the boy to disturb her sleep but she usually huffed, muttered unkind words under her breath and turned over to try and resettle herself. 

Petunia couldn’t explain why she hadn’t just followed routine. Lord knows the boy expected little from her. She flicked the kitchen light off, watching as the boy winced as it turned on, hundred-mile gaze flickering from the glass to her. He looked through Petunia more times than not, but he’d at least react to Dudder’s with some form of civilisation.

‘It’s three in the morning,’ she muttered quietly. Dudley’s sleep was all over the place because he had important things to be doing, but she didn’t want to wake up the rest of the house if not. 

‘I know.’ Harry nods, uncurling his hands from the glass. ‘I’m sorry to wake you.’

Petunia blinks at the unexpected response. ‘Can’t sleep, boy?’ 

Harry’s lips coil into unkind. ‘It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to.’

_Hardly a surprise,_ Petunia thought. He’d been able to sleep like the dead, before; it’d always come to him easily that they’d have to make all sorts of racket to get him up and moving. A few years of that school - of those _people?_ and whatever they’d instilled in this boy was lost, along with his peace of mind and whatever shred of normalcy they had given him.

Nothing left of this boy now. Of _that_ boy, the boy who Petunia had watched for sixteen years and could no longer recognise. Couldn’t see the little boy in this - wizard; in the shadows under his eyes or the uneven length of his hair. She couldn’t see it in the paleness of his skin or the scars that littered his body. 

‘It’s early, Aunt Petunia,’ Harry said. He didn’t address them often, more times than not he’d talk around having to say their names, that’s if he spoke at all. He was quiet. Petunia half wished he’d never left but most of her - most of her wished he’d never come back.

Petunia inclines her head as she stares at him. ‘How tired are you?’

Harry blinks at her in bafflement before his face smoothes over and he shrugs at her. ‘Wouldn’t know.’ 

Petunia swallows down her outrage, her demands for respect. They are barely family and although he was once again in their house, it didn’t seem to matter. Mainly, Petunia just wanted looking at him to be a little easier. ‘How’s that?’ 

Harry huffs, as if amused. ‘Get used to something enough and you can’t remember what it was like to be any different.’ 

Petunia swallows and it tastes bitter on her tongue. This was _her_ son, Petunia’s nephew; named after their grandfather, Harrison who’d fought in the war and came out of it with half his hand missing. Grandmother Daphne had been a nurse, treated soldiers which was where they’d met. They never got over it; there was always a glimmer of it, like they’d left part of themselves behind even though they’d lived. 

And here, generations later, Petunia saw Grandfather Harrison’s fatigue and Grandmother Daphne’s vacancy. She saw that, here, now. Maybe Lily should have known better, however much they’d loved their grandparents; she should have wanted better for him. 

Instead, here they were. Lily was dead and Harry was broken.

‘Think that’s normal do you?’

‘I know that nothing about me is normal.’ It’s harsher, more expected of him but there’s a lack of care to it that made it less accusing. 

‘When was the last time you could walk with any sense of grace?’ Petunia asks cuttingly, wanting to poke to garner some type of relation. For all the pieces the boy was in, he could handle her sharp edges. There was nothing weak about Lily’s son which was really, part of the problem. It gave people expectations.

‘Caught a Severing Charm to the leg while I was duelling Voldemort,’ Harry replies without any sort of filter. He wasn’t the type to censor himself, never had been. He’d bite out the truth even if he’d end up swallowing blood. ‘They were too busy shipping me off to heal me properly. I suppose it’s too late now.’ 

‘Don’t they have doctors?’ Petunia asks as her eyes narrow on their own accord in disgust. 

‘Healers,’ Harry corrects as he reaches out for the glass. The tremble in his hands is much too obvious. ‘Not many were there. I suppose they had other patients.’ 

Petunia sneers. ‘I suppose they don’t have the Hippocratic Oath there.’ 

Harry’s face morphs into a grim expression. ‘Guess not.’ 

Petunia looked at her nephew, her five-foot-something, sixteen-year-old nephew and bit down everything Lily would have wanted to say. Her sister got herself killed and left this boy, abandoned him to a world that was quick to throw him away. Harry was all their’s now and maybe that’s why he behaved like he wasn’t truly here, because soon enough they’d take him back. When they wanted something else from him. 

He knew that now, maybe he’d always known that. 

‘Don’t stay down here too long,’ Petunia says instead as she turns the light back off and goes back to bed. Back to her husband and the bed their share, back in the warm. 

* * *

_"Confirmed deaths have already reached the hundreds, tens of which being UK citizens. The Prime Minister is in talks with Japan later today, to discuss measures that are being taken against this act of terrorism. Emperor Hisahito is said to be releasing a statement after the UN conference, however reports say that he is devastated by the news.”_

* * *

Dudder’s had told her that they would be probably sleeping in and not to disturb them; they’d get up later on their own. Petunia didn’t have much of a problem with that though the boy should pull his own weight if he was going to be staying with them. (It made her uncomfortable, occasionally, having to watch Harry hobble around like a cripple.)

Having him return brought up a lot of questions with the neighbours who’d known - vaguely that Petunia had lost most of her family to terrorist attacks. _‘Homeless again,’_ Petunia had stated without an ounce of regret. _‘I think he was shacking up with this girl he got pregnant before she found out about his criminal record. From the sounds of things she kicked out and I couldn’t very well leave him out in the streets, what would my sister say if she were still here?’_

An embarrassment but many of the women she’d befriended at church had been sympathetic. It wasn’t like they knew about him, his violence, his breed and how he probably fucks the wrong type. No one but a few knew and that was fine by Petunia, having had the shock of her life at seeing him back with them, in their knew home which had never been touched by freaks before.

Life went on though and there things to do, breakfast to make. Sighing, she slipped out of bed like a good, respectable wife midsts her husbands thunderous snores. She picked up her makeup bag as she left to carry it with her to the bathroom which had been moved from the medicine cabinet to her dressing table once the boy moved back. A precaution against any more freakishness on his part.

Once Petunia had taken care of herself and her face was on, she crept past both her husband and her son to the staircase. She made her way to the kitchen, akin sure to keep the door open so that the smell of her cooking could stir the household awake.

Petunia immediately began opening packets as soon as the lights were on and she had her hob full of frying pans. Three plastic packets of bacon, two cartons of eggs, a couple of tins of baked beans, another three packets of sausages and so on. Her boys deserved a proper English feast despite how her Dudder’s had cut back. 

He was so thin now! Much too thin for his big bones. Vernon was a proper man with a filled out figure though most restaurants struggled to fill him; notorious as they were for their small potions. Absolutely ridiculous, but then she wasn’t surprised clothing stores were positively _discriminatory._ Even Marks and Spencer’s let them down with only going up to a XXL in the very basic of shirts and trousers.

They were civilised though, were the boy wasn’t. Some times Petunia would see him wearing something that they had given him when he was twelve; her Dudder’s hand-me-downs and it was a disgrace. Even clothing she didn’t recognise, newer clothing could hardly be worn in refined company. His hair was outrageously long; reaching his shoulders and he walked with a limp! It was disgusting! 

If Petunia didn’t know that the boy had been given a taste of his own medicine in that war of his, she would have suspected him to be - well. Good people should hardly think it. Out of sight, out of mind but she’d likely have suspected him to be a dirty, little faggot. Trying to be more feminine to turn men to unholy practices. 

She caught one whiff of any of that and she didn’t care _what_ she’d said or who came knocking down her door. Petunia would _not_ have such immoral behaviour going on in her house, especially not around her Dudder’s. What if he caught it?

Petunia had just been plating up when her husband’s footsteps echoed down the stairwell, greeting long before he did as his slow descent allowed her time to deliver his food to the head of the table and our the kettle for some morning tea. No more coffee in this house, they were trying to be healthy.

Just as Vernon was fitting through the doorframe, Petunia turned the kitchen television on so that he could view it from the counter. ‘Morning, dear,’ she greeted as she went to the fridge and pulled out the tub of low calorie yogurt. She dolloped a few small spoonfuls out and added granola to the mix. 

She joined her husband with her bowl and spoon, who was already tucking into his food with a youthful vigour, forkfuls at a time. ‘Put on the news, love,’ he asked of her. ‘I want to hear how the stocks are doing.’ 

Such a man of the day, was Vernon. Happily, Petunia flickered through the channels and just noticed the “Breaking News” banner when the doorbell rang. She glanced at her husband in surprise but he was already immersed in the screen, so she got up to see how would be calling on them so early.

It was only just a few minutes past six, who could it possibly be? The postman; lazy blight that she was, didn’t get to their street until gone nine and the milkman wasn’t due to deliver today. It…it couldn’t be one of those freaks, could it? The boy had all but promised that they wouldn’t be bothered. 

Petunia got to the door and opened the door aggressively, prepared to scream bloody murder but instead of robes and breads and freakishness, she got one of their hard-working policemen, one of those iPad in hands, flanked by two paramedics and another in a suit, looking harried and tired. 

She blinked as her mind caught up with this reality. 

‘Is this the Dursley residence, please?’ the policeman asked quickly, closet to the door with the barest glance down to his clipboard. 

‘Yes, how may I help you?’ she responded, calming from her initial fury. 

‘Does a - _Dudley_ Dursley live here?’ he continued with a thin expression. 

‘Yes,’ Petunia replied curiously, wondering what sort of mistake this was. They hadn’t called the emergency services but they had the right information which made this doubly strange. 

The man in a suit shifted. ‘And a Harry James Potter?’ 

Petunia’s stomach tightened. So this had something to do with the freak did it? No one should know that he was here, he certainly hadn’t been up onto any paperwork. ‘Temporarily,’ she answered reluctantly. ‘His parents were killed drunk driving but we don’t have guardianship.’

The man in a suit gave her a look she didn’t much appreciate but said nothing. ‘But he lives here?’ 

‘At the moment,’ Petunia agreed reluctantly.

‘Well, then,’ the man says in a rush and suddenly Petunia notices his American accent. A yankee outside her house! Why she never! ‘We have some bad news, may we come in?’ 

Petunia was about just about to let them in, despite her confusion when she heard Vernon’s scream of rage which erupted from the kitchen. His kitchen sounds to scrap across their new flooring and something smashed not long after. 

Without a thought to spare, the policeman was thrusting the iPad into the man’s startled hands, who almost dropped it in the rush. The policeman barged rudely past and disappeared down the hallway were her Vernon was just emerging from the kitchen door.

‘Please, ma’am,’ the man says before she can can follow were there seems to be a situation occurring as the policeman tries to get Vernon back into the kitchen. ‘While Officer Philips handles your husband, we need you to stay calm.’

‘I _am_ calm,’ Petunia snaps. ‘But that _officer_ is manhandling my husband!’ 

‘He’s been on a twenty-four hour shift dealing with a very difficult situation. I can tell you haven’t had the chance to see the news but -’

Vernon gets pepper sprayed and she’s about to go to his side when the man restrains her. ‘Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to remain with me while Officer Philips calms your husband down.’ 

‘Get your _hands off me this instance!’_ Petunia demands in outrage.

‘Ma’am!’ the man snaps. Something about his voice startles her still. ‘I am Zachary Roche, from the Embassy and I need you to listen to me.’

Petunia sneers. ‘And why should I listen to you?’

The man - Roche, his face hardens and his grip on her tightens. ‘Cuz this has to do with ya boys, Ma’am,’ he responds with some steel.

‘ _Boy,’_ she corrects with a hiss. 

Roche’s eyes narrow. ‘I am not so selective.’ 

‘ _I_ do not care what  -’

‘This is a matter of life and death, Missus Dursley!’ Roche shouts and Petunia feels herself freeze. ‘I’m sure you know what a Nerve-Gear is. Unfortunately, there is a problem with the machinery and people have already died. This situation is dire, do yer understand that?’ 

‘…yes,’ Petunia responds timidly.

Roche nods and after a moment of staring, slowly lets her go. Her arm is red but she sudden;y has a lot less focus for it. He takes a breath. ’Has anyone disturbed your son or nephew since they put the Nerve-Gear on?’ 

Petunia swallows. ‘No.’

‘And there’s no one else in the household who would have, or are able to interrupt the program?’ Petunia shakes her head. ‘Any power cuts?’

Roche breathes out and monitors for the paramedics to enter. They do without word and head for the stairs. ‘Georgia and Ian are going to go check on them. Once their stats have been secured and we reconnect their Nerve-Gears to their equipment, we will rush them to the nearest hospital to keep them stable.’ 

‘I don’t understand,’ Petunia sobs, feeling shaky.

Roche nods and his eyes arm briefly. ‘We’ll be able to talk betteh once things oh’settled.’ That wasn’t very helpful. ‘They’ll be fine. I’m ‘ere tah ‘elp with it.’ 

‘Who sent you?’ Petunia asks, trying and failing to control the trembling in her limbs. 

‘We’ve been up all night,’ he says which wasn’t really an answer. ‘Emergency services ‘ave been workin’ ‘ard to reach everyone effected but…magicals require advisement. I wasn’t lyin’, I’m from the Embassy.’ 

‘Magicals?’ Petunia breathes as she takes a step back. ‘You’re with the freaks! How’re you connected with our embassy?’ 

Roche frowns at her and his lips are set into an aggressive line. ‘Yer find that…freaks are connected with the English government as much as the Ministry. Yer think yer Queen don’t know ‘bout us?’ 

‘Her…Majesty?’ Petunia repeats numbly as she holds her chest, stiff in shock. 

The paramedics call from upstairs and then they are carrying her son down on a stretcher, that contraption on his head. Roche leads her outside, out of the way so that they are able to get out of the front door without incident. ‘Me an’ Officer Philips can give ya a ride tah the hospital once he be finished with yer husband, yeah?’ 

‘…yes.’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fucccccccccc. I had rewritten this chapter out of snipbits of what was - chapter 2? And then I lost it, didn't realise it hadn't gone up when I did my mass update cuz I'm an idiot. I look forward to the day this fic is finished and I can delete all these notes.


	6. Temper Temper

Dudley woke up slowly, lethargic with the embrace of sleep that was about to pull him back into unconsciousness when he remembered. Remembered yesterday which had started so _normally_ if you discounted his cousin and how they’d been actually getting alone and spending time together. Until SAO -

Startled, Dudley’s head whirled to the window which was streaming light into the room. He’d fallen asleep. _When had he fallen asleep?_ He hadn’t even noticed drifting off but by now - by now Mum would have been up and she…

He all but lurched out of bed, covers sliding over his body like they’d never been there to start with. Dudley hits the floor but the sudden loss of height doesn’t starve his panic as he stumbles to the empty bed opposite his own, sheets undisturbed.

Harry…wasn’t in his bed.

_Harry wasn’t in his bed._

Dudley can hear the echo of his heartbeat, feels faint as he stares and stares. No. _No._ Not Harry. Harry couldn’t just - just. No! ‘Harry,’ he whispers, voice barely audible as his breathing grew more erratic. Silence followed.

‘ _HARRY!’_ The scream bellowed from his throat but he couldn’t feel it vibrate. Couldn’t feel anything but a faint tingle as his eyes frantically jump around the room, only to pause when the bathroom door slams open.

There, Harry skids out - naked, pixelated and unsexed, dripping water from one room to the next with his staff in hand. His expression is set but his eyes are wide as they search for danger before settling on Dudley. Wafts of steam enter and hit Dudley in the face. The temperature shifts accordingly but it’s far from natural -

_No,_ he shakes himself. _Keep on track._

‘What?’ Harry asks, wrong footed and on-guard. ‘What is it?’ 

_Alive,_ he thinks. His cousin. His cousin too short and just a bit too brave. His cousin who gave more than he got. Dark hair, green eyes. _Harry._ Without thinking, Dudley stumbles up and in a rush of momentum and limbs, clenches his hand into a fist and hits Harry’s _still-there-face._ The force sends Harry backgrounds onto the floor where his staff clatters away from them.

‘Dudley?’ Harry says in askance, confusion on his wrong face as he uses the wrong name. The warning that cuts in-between them is barely a distraction, red and glaring though it is. His cousin’s hand goes up to brush his palm against his cheek though he can’t take damage in a safe zone. ‘Wha-?’

‘You weren’t here,’ Dudley hisses and thinks he sounds a bit unsteady even to his own ears. He doesn’t care as he stares, and tries not imagine what it would have been like to be stranded a lone here, in a new world that was suddenly so ominous with ten-thousand players, all of whom were strangers.

‘I…I don’t sleep well,’ Harry doesn’t need to explain but he does, softly, as he gets up from the floor with round eyes. ‘So…I got up, waited a bit and found I - it was strange, I could tell I needed the loo -’

Dudley can’t help himself however bad it makes him feel when he punches his idiot, _idiot_ cousin again. Another warning appears which he ignores. ‘The next time, _wake me up!_ You can’t say the stuff you were, like how you don’t if you’ll be here and then _not be here.’_

Harry rubs at his face though it’d be from instinct alone. ‘I…’ His cousin pauses before he takes a breath. ‘I’m sorry, De. I didn’t think -’

‘No you bloody well didn’t!’ Dudley snaps and without pride and much regret, hits his stupid cousin again and he crashes back down. Harry’d given him a fucking heart attack; for being thoughtless, for saying what he did at all. 

Dudley deflated not a minute later. The guilt triples and he hurries to kneel and grabs hold of his cousin whose as naked as the day he was born, sprawled on the ground. Dudley squeezes Harry as tightly as the system will allow and doesn’t bother to wait for Harry to return it before he pulls away.

Dudley pulls them both up. He steps away, averting his gaze. ‘Dry off and put something on, will you? Dudley grumbles as his eyes attach themselves to the corner of the room; not needing to see Harry flush red to know he does as he rushes off, forgetting his staff as he speeds into the bathroom. The door shuts loudly and it doesn’t take more than that for the weapon to shatter and disappear in transportation.

Dudley breathes through his nose, glancing at his fist. He flexes his fingers and grimaces. He should _never_ have hit Harry; he’d know that but he’d still done it. His coach would kill him if he’d seen that. He’d already hurt Harry too much. He couldn’t _keep_ doing this. Dudley had always had a problem with his temper, it got away from him, overwhelmed him and all that emotion had to go somewhere. 

‘You should probably read that pop-up,’ Harry’s voice greets him as he emerges from the bathroom, clothed and unarmed. Dudley watches him for a moment, remembers his thought when they’d been running from the Town of Beginnings and how he’d noted Harry’s easy stride, the ease of Harry’s movement.

But then “pop-up” is resonating in his ears and Dudley looks at the warning alert that he had yet to dismiss it. He starts to read it and almost wishes he hadn’t. ‘Shit,’ Dudley says, running a hand through his hair. Harry is by his side immediately, hand on his shoulder.

 

> **Warning**
> 
> ** Repeated violence in Safe Zone against Player(s) **
> 
> ** Fine is now pending at The Court House. You have a week to pay. **
> 
> ** (x) **

‘Ah,’ Harry cringes. ‘So…’

Dudley closes the warning and scrubs his face with his hands, quietly despairing. ‘It’s my own fault,’ he sighs, eyes shutting closed as he feels exhausted. Steeling himself, he turns to address Harry. ‘What do we do?’ It wasn’t as simple as just going to pay however much Cor he still had on him. He probably wouldn’t be able to afford it with how little money they had after buying their weapons and the room. The problem was the travel involved, knowing that the Court House would be in Starting which meant returning to that chaos. 

‘Well…we have a week,’ Harry says slowly. ‘We’ll do that Quest today, get some training… Try and earn some money before then. How’s that?’

‘Good. Great,’ Dudley replies though they’d have to be flexible about it to make sure they didn’t miss the week’s deadline. He wasn’t entirely certain where the quest was, only having a rough idea from what he had heard from the betas. This was the finished product, though, things always get changed when the developments finished. 

‘Sorry…I shouldn’t have…’ Dudley gestures at Harry hopelessly.

Harry shrugs. ‘It’s alright.’ He waves it away and i just makes Dudley feels smaller. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ 

‘Harry…’

Harry shakes his head. ‘No, really. I didn’t even feel it. It helped you more than it hurt me -’

‘That’s not an excuse.’ Dudley frowns and no, it can’t be. Allowing this to be just swept under the rug - he can’t be who he was before those Dementors. He _can’t_. ‘I shouldn’t have - hit you. It was…I was worried and didn’t know how to handle it. I’m sorry.’ 

Something about Harry softens, relaxes even if his brow is completely _confounded_ in how they knot. ‘Then…I forgive you,’ he allows. ‘Now, do you want to leave for this quest?’ 

Dudley looks out the window, sees how bright it is and nods. They’ll have to be careful about the time if they didn’t want to get lost wondering around in the dark. It was just too dangerous with the stakes so high. ‘Yeah, if we can’t find it by tonight we’ll have to try again tomorrow.’ 

Harry frowns for a second but after a moment agrees. ‘Alright, let's go then,’ he says and they both move towards the door with Harry, bending to pick up his staff that he carries with them as the leave.

* * *

Dudley ends up leading them towards a barn about half an hours walk from the Inn. There’s a boy around their age propped up on an unstable-looking fence, appearing uneasy if the set of his features said anything. He dressed like a farmhand of some sort but what captured Harry’s attention was the cursor above the boy’s head; it wasn’t a crystal like every other player’s way though the colour was right for an NPC even with the indicator as an exclamation point framed in a box.

‘De -’

‘A Quest NPC.’ Dudley responds without Harry having to finish. ‘C’mon.’

Harry nods and follows Dudley over to the boy who - unlike the barmaid - responds to them before they speak, turning in their direction once they’re close enough and narrowing his hazel eyes. ‘Is…something troubling you?’ Dudley asks and instantly the exclamation point changes to a question mark.

‘Who…who’re you?’ the boy asks. 

Dudley looks a bit stumped so Harry tries to help with wherever this is going. ‘Friends. We’ve heard you need some help?’ 

The NPC turns towards him and doesn’t speak for a second or two before he’s lightly jumping off of the fence to stand in front of them. ‘Aye,’ he responds in a way that immediately makes Harry think back to Seamus. ‘Been havin’ some trouble, me. You interested in some cow huntin’?’

_Cows?_ Harry thinks and subtly glances at Dudley who at least looks like this should make sense. ‘Wild?’ Dudley asks.

The boy grimaces. ‘Aye,’ he confirms. ‘Been…attackin’ this here farm. Me Pa tried to run em off bur…he weren’t no fighter.’ 

“ _Tried.” “Weren’t.”_ Harry winces and thinks that it was unlikely that they wouldn’t be meeting the father. ‘I’m sorry,’ he feels compelled to say. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand what NPC’s were once Dudley had explained what felt like so very long ago. It was just…sad, was all. 

The boy looks back up from where he had turned his attention to his shoes and sort of…stares at Harry. ‘Thank yer,’ he responds eventually. ‘I ain’t strong neither an’ I got a little sista. I can’t…’ Harry’s discomfort grows. If someone really had…designed these people then why couldn’t they be… _happier?_

‘When do the cows attack?’ Dudley questions as he places a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

‘Night, when the moon’s full.’ The boy responds. ‘Does that mean y'all be there? An’ stop them damn cows?’ 

‘Yes,’ Dudley responds just in time for another pop-up to appear in front of them. 

> ** Cows’ Counter Attack Quest Activated **

The wind blows ominously even when the boy’s face relaxes, shoulders slumping. ‘Thank ya.’ He breathes. ‘Me sista’s sick so I can’t…I need ta be ‘ere.’

‘Why “counter attack”?’ Harry asks in confusion and the boy’s face shutters closed. He recoils, taking a step back.

Big eyes turned wet and Harry wonders again why someone would program this. ‘Hey…?’

‘I - I didn’t mean to.’ The boy pleads as his arms curl around his middle. ‘It was just…Me Pa had just gotten this new herd an’…I - I _didn’t mean ta.’_

‘Choice.’ Dudley whispers.

‘Didn’t mean to?’ Harry parrots as he focuses on the boy.

The boy sniffs as tears build. ‘I…was playin’ around with a friend o’ mine an…a calf died…’ he cries as he looks frantically up at Harry. ‘It…it was an accident, bur…the herd - it…it went _mental._ ’

Harry swallows, an awful, automated feeling followed and he nodded. ‘Alright. _Alright,’_ He says. ‘Tonight there’ll be another attack?’ 

Tears are running down flushed cheeks before disappearing into nothingness under the boy’s chin. Luckily, he can still respond. ‘Aye.’

‘Then we have time for some training.’ Harry turns to Dudley who seems kind of lost.

‘…yeah,’ Dudley agrees and starts to turn around. 

‘Later, kid,’ Harry waves as he goes to follow his cousin who was heading in the general direction of the Deep Forest. ‘De…?’

‘Quest NPC’s are a bit different to normal NPC’s.’ Dudley states seemingly the apropos of nothing. ‘A lot of NPC’s are just programmed for simple tasks and to understand a few preset commands. Quest NPCs are much more intelligent; they’re given personalities, relationships, backstories and are able to interact on a whole other level.’

‘Alright…’ Harry trails off, slightly confounded.

Dudley looks at him then, that sort of constipated worry clear on his face. ‘But…don’t go - getting _attached.’_

Harry’s lips purse and thinks he understands. ‘Okay,’ he agrees simply.

Dudley nods and seems to drop it. ‘So what…training were you thinking about?’

Harry jumps on that new subject and not just to try and expel the awkwardness. ‘We need to practice how to fight together better.’ 

‘We’re in a party now but it's a good idea.’ Dudley frowns. ‘Some strategy wouldn’t hurt either, I guess.’ 

Harry nods. Honestly, he wasn’t overly used to fighting with an ally. The last person who he had trusted with his back had been his teacher, his mentor and although Dudley was trying, he wasn’t Mad Eye. ‘Where would you want to start?’ He didn’t have his magic here and he was very out of his element. Dudley was better, so Harry would have to try and let go of some control here.

‘We should try and get used to the Fight and Switch.’ Dudley suggestions. 

Harry blinks and after an explanation agrees to spending a few hours at practising this in the Deep Forest. The time of trial and error stretches out until night starts to fall and they head back to the Inn for something to eat on the spoils of today's massacre. Consuming anything in SAO ended up a very… _strange_ experience and Harry couldn’t help but find it unpleasant, but it numbed the hunger pangs that echoed through this empty shell of his so he deemed it necessary. 

There wasn’t much of a variety on the Inn’s menu, with just a few different meals and a number of different, very _expensive_ drinks and spirits. They ended up spending too much in the Inn but Dudley had been worried about what would happen if they starved themselves despite not currently being connected to their bodies. Harry had conceded since Dudley had more experience with technology.

They finished up and left the Inn again to check the position of the moon and decided to head out when they see how dark it is. Harry’s eyes are constantly flickering to the sky for the time and what is around them. He’s paranoid that they’ll be attacked from the shadows while on the way to the farm and wishes that this quest didn’t have to happen at night.

Luckily, the closer they approached the farm on the beaten path the more in focus the barn was. Thankfully, the Quest NPC had lit the barn so they didn’t have to rely on the brightness from the moon and also had candlelight streaming from the windows. Harry breathed a little more easily knowing that even when loud snorting and grunting noises reached them as they got to their destination where they had first met the Quest NPC.

They stand shoulder to shoulder as the moon slowly inches its way to its peak while they ready their weapons and listen to the crunching of plants under hoofs and the sounds of their breathing, out in the darkness. Harry’s heart settles into a slightly erratic pace but it is one that Harry is comfortable with; used to in his years of battles, of war and monsters. Dudley wasn’t and maybe that was something he should have paid more attention to as multiple sets of glowing red eyes bleed through the black.

* * *

Dudley lost his head. He played a lot of MMORPGs but he hadn’t realised the difference it made to be up close and personal with the mobs he was fighting. With actual monsters - or good enough - and to have to “physically” battle them. They had all been thrown into this death game and the consequences of what that meant hadn’t fully…clicked until he had rushed forward and gotten separated from Harry.

There had been too many and with every hit he wasn’t dealing half as much damage as he was taking. He got more and more panicked with his health etching into the red and his thinking grew more erratic. He nearly -

But then Harry was there, using the Beast Cows as stepping stones until he was back to Dudley’s side. (Must have been an unlocked Skill, Dudley’s mind whispered). Harry, whose expression had a manic edge to it even if it might seem psychotically calm; with all controlled movements as he swirled to put his back to the mobs. He stood and went through his menu, taking the time to scroll to summon a Potion to his hand all the while taking damage. Damage for Dudley.

Because Dudley had lost it; because Dudley was an _idiot,_ twice the one as whatever he had accused Harry of _ever_ being. 

‘Heal,’ Harry commanded as he held the phial in front of Dudley and instantly he feels light. The notes from the betas had never suggested any sensory feedback from damage but that wasn’t the case anymore; the lower his hit points had gotten, the slower his reaction time had become, the number his limbs felt with a pins and needle sensation starting to travel through his body.

Now, he was free but he didn’t even have time to digest the change before Harry was ripping around to attack the Beast Cow that had been ramming into his unguarded back. _‘Dudley,’_ Harry commands in a voice so deep it near distorted the mic that was enabling it. ‘Help me.’

Dudley jolts as if burnt as he jumps into action and starts to pull his own fucking weight. _Idiot,_ his mind screams as he slashes. _Idiot,_ it roars as he parries and unleashes a Sword Skill. _What were you thinking?! Dudley, what -_

But Dudley knows already. He wasn’t _like_ Harry. He had lived a mostly save life minus few exceptions like encountering those Dementors but even then, he had had Harry to deal with it. He had never had to fight for his life and now not only was that hurting _him_ but it was also hurting Harry.

_Sorry,_ Dudley thinks as tears well in his eyes. He feels their sting and hates how they cloud his vision. Like SAO was punishing him for having an emotional response. He hates _himself_ for putting Harry in this situation at all. This is all his Goddamn fault and he can’t -

_Fuck._

He can’t be the reason that Harry dies. Not here. Not like this. Not with all Harry had been through and fucking survived. This couldn’t - _pull it together,_ he demands as he yells “Switch” and forces Harry back as he screams into action, raw and desperate. His own voice breaks and he resents that as he forces his sword through a Beast Cow’s fucking face. 

Their attention seems to be on him now, the pressure less on Harry whose own HP was low enough for concern. ‘Use a Potion.’ Dudley calls as he defends, sword heavy in his hands as he watches in his peripheral as Harry hesitates, staff wavering before nodding and opening his menu up once more. 

Dudley snaps forward again more to see a Beast Cow trying to get around him and - _no._ He rushes in and cuts the bastard across the face, it's a small cut but it figures that a mob that big would have high Defence. It doesn’t seem to take it’s attention off of Harry either which further infuriates Dudley.

_Since you liked it so much the first time,_ Dudley thinks and takes a breath. Holds as his heart echoes in his ears and releases in an almighty _roar_ that has even Harry flinching from where he’s downing their last Potion like an alcoholic on his last drink. The sound rattles and for a minute there is silence as every mob surrounding them freezes. 

 

> ** Class Activated **
> 
> ** Class _Protector_ Has Been Triggered. **
> 
> ** Do You Identify as _Protector_? **
> 
> ** [O] [X] **

Dudley’s mind barely has time to process the pop-up. He’s in the middle of a quest, trying not to die and murder his cousin and the screen is frankly in the way. But “Class” catches his attention before he can close it because - _a Class_. They were notoriously hard to activate due to the prerequisites. In SAO you couldn’t just click a button and _choose_. That wasn’t enough. “Protector”; Dudley knew that Class. It was a Tank, in other words. A Tank to specialise in defence, he could work with that. Harry was more of a forward -

‘What’re you doing?!’ Harry snaps as he calls “Switch” and forces Dudley’s arse intro gear. ‘Get into the moment!’ 

‘Right!’ Dudley shouts back as he presses the accept button with a shaky hand. Classes were a huge advantage. It meant a different, alternative Skill Tree and weapon specialisation. It meant _choices._

Dudley feels almost jittery as hope and fear war in him as he tries to concentrate back on the battle. It lasts hours and it’s early morning by the time they’ve finished the last mob off. They both stand out in the clearing they’ve made, still and ready while waiting for one more - a surprise attack that never comes when a pop-up appears in from of them.

> ** Quest Cleared **
> 
> **[O]**

Dudley all but falls to the ground in relief but doesn’t even get a chance to breathe at having _survived_ it before Harry is turning on him with burning eyes, and he thinks that maybe he wouldn’t after all. ‘You -’ his cousin growls with his mouth set as if he’s about to bite into Dudley’s throat. _‘You -’_

Harry has a sharp, unforgiving tongue. He’s a cheeky brat, really. Always has been and Dudley couldn’t ever see that changing. For that reason, Dudley knows he’s fucked up when Harry can’t even finish a sentence. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says instead.

‘You think a -’ Harry is about to say before he’s standing down with a guarded expression of _mighty_ displeasure. Really, it was never truly the magic that Dudley was afraid when he was younger. His little cousin just always had this way about this that made him seem…more.

‘Heroes!’ a young voice calls which is enough of an answer to Dudley’s unasked questions as to what had stalled the fire. He looks behind him and sees the Quest NPC with another just next to him, a little girl wearing old fashioned bed clothes and holding on to her “brother’s” hand.

Dudley glances at Harry and they both approach the two. The nearer they get, the sicker the girl looks. The boy has a large grin on his face, stretched and thin as he thanks them. ‘Mighty kind o’ ya!’ He exclaims as his sister silently nods, poking out just behind his shoulder. ‘Ere, take this. Pa _did_ always say to repay debts.’ 

> ** Bonus Item **
> 
> ** Cream **
> 
> **[O]**

Cream isn’t anything to get excited over but the reward was only part of the reason why people went on quests. Another reason was to earn EXP, Skills and - sometimes - currency and Dudley knew that they had accomplished as much.

‘Thank you,’ Harry says as he accepts the Item. 

The boy grins. ‘Jus’ don’t eat it all at once,’ he quips as he waves goodbye, his cursor turning back into an Exclamation point. 

‘V-visit again s-sometime….’ the little girl whispers and Dudley knows from her own cursor that she would give them the other quest on this floor.

‘Sure,’ he agrees and hopes that that's enough even as she smiles shyly back at him. He vaguely knew some of the initiating sentences to start some quests but not many and it would really be all guess work.

‘Bye,’ Harry says with as much patience as he has before turning around and leaving Dudley staring after him. It takes a second before he realises he’s meant to react to that and he quickly starts to try and catch of up with Harry’s pace. 

‘Choice -’

‘You’re an idiot.’ Harry states before Dudley can try apologising again.

Dudley cringes but doesn’t deny it as he stares at the angry back of Harry’s head. ‘Yeah, I know. I’m -’

‘This isn’t just another of your games,’ Harry goes on, stomping down the path back to the Inn in a way which said he’d much rather be stepping on someone’s _face_. ‘You don’t get another chance if you fuck this up.’

Dudley feels himself tense and hates himself just a little more. ‘I know.’

Harry turns so quickly towards him that Dudley must have blinked and missed it because one second he’s staring at Harry’s wild hair and the next Harry’s nose is bumping into his as his small cousin has to lean up on his tip toes to slap his shoulder, pushing Dudley back a step. ‘Then. Don’t. Do. That. Again.’ 

‘Right, I promise,’ Dudley responds sincerely. He has no plans to hold Harry back or put him in danger. ‘I’m…I really _am_ sorry.’

Harry’s frozen for a moment. ‘I don’t want you to be sorry!’ Harry yells back as his eyes go wet and - _Christ_ , Dudley feels like a piece of shit already but _please don’t cry,_ he pleads to himself. ‘I want you to stay _not_ dead!’

Guilt triples in Dudley and he almost apologises again, before he remembers that it's probably not something Harry wants to hear for a third - fourth time. ‘I know. I’m…readjusting. I’ll get my head on straight, Choice, I promise.’ 

A second passes, then two and then three before Harry curls inwards like the strings that had been holding him up had been cut. ‘Just…you can’t die on me, you hear? You _can’t.’_

Dudley’s heart beat speeds up and he wishes that Harry’s anger was merely that, that it wasn’t born out of fear or need. Dudley wishes that he could promise Harry this; could reassure him the world but this was a _death game_ now and Harry had been through a war at the ripe old age of sixteen where leaders of both sides had been pushing him into the great unknown. 

Harry’s smart and he understands how death goes _so much_ better than Dudley, himself does. They’d be empty words so he doesn’t say them. ‘I’m with you, Harry,’ he promises instead because he will be. Because there is _magic_ in this world. ‘And I always will be.’ 

Harry doesn’t nod right away but when he does it’s small like he’s accepting one thing when he really wants more of something else. In the next few days they ago on to complete the next quest and set out to Starting City. It is, tellingly, not brought up again and Dudley feels like he’s walking on eggshells not to _fuck it up_ as the two of them try and get used to - needing each other. 

Luckily, they gain a friend from their trip that goes to ease the tensions between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, to keep things short because I've got another chapter to add to this and I'll probs delete the note after a few months but I've given IRL a work over. It needed a few changes, better pacing, just things fixed cuz they didn't work so well. Also, I info dumped too hard and it wasn't feeling natural to me so I've taken that out and refocused with more relevant information and will continue to release it when it is relevant etc so, yeah. 
> 
> The next chapter will be a properly new chapter, filled with new content so I hope people enjoy it and forgive the shuffle round.


	7. Journey to The Courthouse

* * *

  **November 27th, 2022**

* * *

 

The journey back to the Town of Beginnings seemed longer than it had been before, and more draining. The adrenaline and anxiety to get them away from ground-zero as quickly as possible must have folded the hours together. Now, they had to experience the painfully uncomfortable distance with clearer heads; leaving Harry to stew in his thoughts.

Harry had kept his dubiety of his well being to himself even when he’d watched every hour on the clock, counting down the seconds like one of perverse birthday. Only instead of waiting to get a year old, he’d been waiting to die. Harry wasn’t about to sleep through that, he had to face it up front, to greet it. 

Dudley didn’t need to know that, the way he had panicked when he had woken up alone was enough for Harry to try and protect him from it. Ready acceptance of death tended to concern people and they had things to concentrate on. (Even if his own focus was split with bafflement he couldn’t help but feel. _How was he alive? T_ he question circled in his head. Logic dedicated from the news feeds that had been shoved mockingly under their nose, if people really _were_ desperate enough to try and remove the NerveGear, then how was Harry still here? It didn’t make sense.)

But Harry was still here, days later, and although false senses of securities often led to disaster, they didn’t have time to wait it out. He could operate with what they had for the minute. Travelling was that for the day, breaking free of the Forest though, and getting closer to town hardly soothed the tension that had been quietly sitting between them.

There was less risk involved in passing through the Forest now with how much they’ve trained their levels had slowly been moving up. The simple red cursors for the mobs had lightened to a light pink; a distinction that said that they were now stronger than their foes. Or, at least some of them. 

Dudley had also had the chance to experiment with his new class and the vocal skills he could use to either disable the mobs or get them to focus on him. It allowed Harry a greater range of movement and there had been less of a struggle as they collaborated. He hasn’t entirely comfortable with it but Dudley had been reworking on his stats and it seemed safe enough from what Dudley had told him.

(‘So, what’s this about a class?’ Harry had made himself ask once he’d calmed down from Dudley’s reckless stupidity. He’d been silent most of that day and although Dudley had tried to fill the gap made between them, there had really only been the one thing he’d become interested in in everything his cousin had said. 

‘Oh…yeah,’ Dudley responded awkwardly as he turned to address properly Harry. ‘Right, I guess I didn’t get much of a chance to go into the classes involved in SAO. I - don’t remember if I’ve already taught you about them before.’

Harry shook his head. ‘Unless you’re talking about hierarchy here then I’m pretty lost,’ he admitted because although this has to do with gaming, Dudley’s collection made him overly familiar with first person shooters and not much else. 

Dudley snorted. ‘Nah, nothin’ like that,’ he replied as he settled in for an explanation. ‘Okay, right, so SAO is basically an RPG, yeah? This type of gaming is really all about being able to - live in what you’re playing even if you have this whole other storyline going on.’

‘Right?’ Harry raised an eyebrow. 

‘Er…it’s basically like having a job description or - a title,’ Dudley attempted to articulate. ‘It goes into this whole Career Path-thing you get here.’

Harry thought a bit about it even as he nodded his head. ‘I see. Elaborate?’ 

‘Er…okay.’ Dudley shuffled closer. ‘So, if someone chose to become a thief, they’d have a whole new skill tree open up to them. Like, being able to unlock things, like eavesdrop. Shit like that.Depending on how involved the classes are with the Cardinal, certain classes may get specialised items or be unable to unlock closed off ares.’

Worry had Harry flexing his hands. ‘That sounds…dangerous.’ The thought that a stranger could be able to listen into their conversations or break into where they were staying - it concerned him even if Dudley hadn’t immediately understood why. 

Dudley shrugged. ‘A Protector is completely different but…I think it’ll be really useful.’

Useful it had been. Dudley had only unlocked one skill from it yet but Harry could already tell they’d be able to do a lot with it, even if Battle Cry would bring Dudley more attention than Harry would want it to. 

It’d been a bit tricky to figure out and Harry hoped that as Dudley got the hang of his class. The “flavour text” and description wasn’t overly informative and it was really all down to trial and error.)

So, even though they were out of potions and their health was nearly the half way point, it was easy enough journey with how much they were working to getting stronger. They still needed to be fast though, if they got swamped down then - well. They were making good time though, and the mobs were familiar to them now.

They were getting there even if reaching the city wouldn’t soothe Harry’s unease.

‘…so, Safe Zones should still be completely - _safe_?’ Harry had asked awkwardly in preparation for returning to the Town of Beginnings. 

Dudley had shrugged, disquieted. ‘I mean…it should be. It’s not like they gain anything by removing them. I doubt mobs would spawn in safe zones anyway; that requires more than just removing a bit of code.’

‘It’s not the mobs I’m all that worried about,’ Harry had admitted even if it was something Dudley probably wouldn’t want to consider. Dudley couldn’t be allowed to remain totally ignorant, it just wasn’t safe.

‘Well, it’s not like anyone would do anything, right? I mean, this is - real now.’ 

‘Dudley, you keep calling this an RPG. A roll playing game and…you’re right. This is what it was designed for; this game was made to get human nature to _fester_. You do know human nature, don’t you? At its most desperate, it’s…’ Harry took a breath as the Battle of Hogwarts, its event, all came rushing back. ‘It’s something we’ll have to think about.’

‘This isn’t a game,’ Dudley refuted with an expression that became more agitated.

‘I remember the friendly fire you and your - clan -’

‘That was different!’ Dudley snapped.

‘Games allow things like that, De!’ Harry had snapped right on back.‘And this -’

‘You’re talking about PKing, right? Who the _fuck_ would -‘

_‘_ Yeah, who, indeed? Because murder is so rare for people to commit.’

‘Choice -’

‘Look, De. We agreed that I was the best at staying alive and I really want you _to stay alive_ , so just…let me do that.’ They’d stared at each other for awhile and maybe Harry was wrong, maybe Dudley was right and this wouldn’t be allowed to occur but Kayaba had said how this “world” was up to their making, and that caused quite a bit of apprehension. ‘If it’s nothing then it’ll be nothing but…’

‘Right, fine,’ Dudley had finally agreed, throwing his hands up in the air. ‘Best offence, I get it, wizard. Let’s just leave, please.’

It’d been obvious that Harry had just worn Dudley down but his cousin had kept it in mind for their journey. They’d only seen a few stragglers around and they had all been jumpy when they caught each other’s gaze. The most common look had been untrusting or wary and Harry and Dudley had quickly been on their way.

There weren’t many players but with everyone, when they sensed each other there was always an air of anticipation. Like the space between them was charged and Harry knew not to stay; he’d been in enough battle situations to know when he was coming a cross a hair trigger. Dudley, himself, seemed a bit unnerved by the encounters. A couple of players had seemed - fine, but they’d also been managing on their own.

Which was the main difference in making Harry approach a player, hugging his knees and all but hyperventilating just outside the city. Dudley had pointed in his direction though Harry had spotted the player just a moment before. 

The sun was setting and the temperature had been steadily cooling for awhile. Getting dark andin the winter season, there would be a reason this huddle of shaking, thready breathing would be out here. It didn’t take much for Harry decide to approach this one, stopping a few feet away and dropping on his knees to try and be as least intimidating. 

‘Careful,’ Dudley whispered lowly as Harry inched forward.

‘Hello?’ Harry asks calmly and watches as the player’s shoulders round. ‘Are you alright?’ It was a pointless question with an obvious answer, but sometimes it needed to be said, to show that you care, that’d you’d noticed.

The player’s raises his face from the cage of his arms and looks up at Harry in this shattered way, which Harry recognises from Hogwarts and people dying and the survivors having to live with it. 

First things first: the player’s breathing is too fast. ‘You need to try and calm down, take bigger breathes,’ Harry states lightly and brings his hand up to hover over the stranger’s shoulder. ‘May I touch you?’

Wide blue eyes stare up at him and Harry looks at his face, about their age, European with messy brown hair that fell in uneven ends to his chin. More distinctive was the pink pigmentation that coloured the left side of his face, sort of like a birthmark though Harry wasn’t positive on what it was with how long he’d been in Wizarding Britain. 

Still, sometimes you just knew with people; knew by how they felt. This player was fine, safe. ‘Pleaze,’ the player whispers finally and Harry lowers his hand, squeezing the junction of the player’s neck.

‘Good, thank you,’ Harry says as he kneels on the ground and Dudley comes by his side, crouching but far more tentative then he usually would be.

‘You need to hold you breath for five seconds,’ Dudley advised softly. ‘Five second in and five seconds out, got it?’ 

Blue eyes glanced in Dudley’s direction uncertainly but nodded vaguely and began to try and slow his breathing. ‘That’s it,’ he praised and continued to, until the player had steadied themselves however exhausted he may feel. 

‘Better?’ Dudley offered after a time.

‘Bet’er,’ the player confirms but his voice sounds dry and cracked. Harry absently wondered what his panic would have sounded like on the other end. ‘You are English?’

_Huh,_ Harry thinks as his mind grasps hold of a very familiar accent. ‘Oui. Êtes-vous Français?’ he asks, recognising the sound from Fleur but mostly, officials he’d spoken with. 

‘Choice?’ Dudley asks in surprise but Harry does little more than smirk.

The player blinks. ‘Tu parle français?’

_Do you speak French?_

Harry shakes his head apologetically. ‘Pas tant.’ _Not much._ Most of the French he knew he either remembered from Primary school or he’d picked up. He’d always had a knack for languages but that didn’t make him fluent. ‘Pouvez-vous parler anglais?’

_Can you speak English?_ Harry could speak a bit but Dudley’s limit would probably be “bonjour”. 

‘I am not very good at et,’ the player replies with some difficulty. ‘But, I can. I am Arslan. What’re your names?’

‘Choice,’ Harry offers even when his real name is on the tip of his tongue. He gestures with his hand to Dudley. ‘That’s Decha.’ 

‘Hi,’ Dudley says awkwardly. 

‘’ello,’ Arslan returns with a slow smile. ‘Zank you for your ‘elp.’

Harry shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he responds, conscious to keep his words simple with Arslan admitting that he wasn’t very good at English. ‘Can I ask what was wrong?’ 

Arslan’s face collapses in on itself and he curls around himself tighter. ‘Er, you don’t have to answer that if you can’t,’ Dudley cuts in uncertainly with some concern, something Harry would have never expected until he’d returned to the Dursley’s.

‘If something’s happened -’ Harry whispers back because if he was attacked or was in need to protection, it was something that he needed to know about if it was going to help but Dudley just shakes his head almost sternly.

‘Can’t force it,’ Dudley states.

Arslan huffs on laughter that could also be described as a sob, but he puts a shaky smile on his face and Harry finds strength in that. ‘You ‘ave been out from ze city?’ 

‘Left the first day,’ Dudley offers grimly. 

‘I ‘ad two friends with me from before. ‘owever, zey disappeared. Someone ‘ad taken zeir Nerve-Gears off…’ he trailed off, sucking in a breath as he did so, eyes glazed. ‘I do not know anyone elze ‘ere.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Harry says because that’s all anyone can ever say. Once someone died, they were gone and words were easy and could be empty but that was all anyone could give in the face of loss. 

Arslan returns it with a short nod and when he continues, it is not about the friends he lost and Harry cannot blame him for that. ‘It waz terrible ‘ere; so much anger. So much fear. People -’ his voice is thick and wet and Harry can’t help but reach back out to one o fhis shaky shoulder. ‘People ‘ave been jumping off ze edge of ze city.’ 

Harry stills and can see Dudley’s face morph into shock in his periphery. ‘What?’

Arslan laughs but it is hysterical in sound, uneven. He may be a year older than Harry but he was still too young to have been forced to see this. ‘Oui. Some t’ought et waz zome kind off joke and zat et would allow zem ‘ome.’ 

‘Some?’ Harry repeats numbly.

‘Ozzers were…’ Arslan stops but Harry already knows. ‘Et is not good to be back ‘ere.’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ Harry says. 

Dudley nods. ‘Yeah, you seem to need it more,’ he states somewhat insensitively. ‘What’re you even doing out here? You’re out of the Safe Zone, even if mobs don’t tend to spawn this close.’ 

‘…‘I ‘ave no one and zere ez power in numbers,’ Arslan replies, seeming the apropos of nothing. ‘I go to ze Guild Master. ‘owever, ze waz no new guilds. So, I decided to try and ‘elp players since…’

‘Since?’ Harry prompts, hearing the hesitance a mile away.

‘I am a beta,’ Arslan reveals with real fear in his voice. ‘Ils étaient fous, pensaient que j'avais quelque chose à voir avec ça mais pas moi! Je ne le fais pas, je -’

‘Arslan,’ Harry interrupts as his brain spins trying to keep up with it all. ‘I - that’s a bit fast even if I could speak that much French. I…understood the basics -’

‘Well I didn’t,’ Dudley who had failed his French, grumbles.

‘No one was speaking to you,’ Harry snipes back petulantly.

‘I noticed,’ Dudley responds.

Arslan snorts but the humour fades as soon as it came. ‘Ze were mad zat I am a beta.’

Dudley blinked in bafflement that Harry shared; not entirely positive on what a beta was even if he’d heard the term thrown around a lot. It had never been fully explained, but Harry had taken it to mean an unfinished game.’Why? Having a beta around sounds useful.’

‘Zey are -’ Arslan flounders, hands twitching on his knees. ‘Ah w'at iz ze word… _soupçons_ …zey zink t’at we ‘ad to ‘ave known about w’at ‘az ‘appened.’ 

Dudley’s lips purse and without a firm understanding Harry was fully ready to take Dudley’s opinion on this. ‘Pretty stupid if you’re stuck in here with the rest of us. Didn’t they think about how you’re in the same situation?’

‘No one ez zinking,’ Arslan states nervously but there is relief in his eyes as he address them. ‘Ze are all zo angry and…I am not very good at ze…ah, duels.’

_Duels?_ Harry thinks absently.

‘Well, Choice was right. Being a beta _is_ usefully,’ Dudley states.

Harry’s gaze flickers to Dudley and he thinks they come to an understanding when Harry squeezes Arslan’s shoulder again. ‘Well, we’re making a guild,’ Harry says though they’d only briefly mentioned creating one; hadn’t discussed it properly but… ‘If you’d like, you could join with us.’

Arslan’s eyes widen hopefully, mouth parted as he stares. ‘Ez ‘zat why you ‘ave returned to ze city?’

Dudley grimaced at the reminder. ‘More or less.’

Arslan frowns in confusion. ‘More or less?’ he repeats.

‘Nous avons d'autres endroits où aller,’ Harry elaborates, ignoring Dudley's huffs.

‘Actually, we could use some of that help now if you’re still offering after all that crap,’ Dudley grumbles. Arslan tilts his head in askance. ‘We need to find the courthouse but SAO’s maps aren’t very detailed and we don’t want to be wondering round every alley.’ 

‘Zat iz because zere iz the Cartograp’y skill for floor mapz, zey only give us ze basics,’ Arslan says slowly and Harry cannot help but feel annoyed at this information. ‘I can lead you to ze court’ouse… Zou, I am…curious why you need to go zere zo soon.’

‘Nothing serious,’ Harry reassures, with the knowledge that needing to go to the courthouse probably doesn’t sound that good. ‘We got - er…into a disagreement.’ 

‘ _I_ got into a disagreement,’ Dudley corrects with a grimace. ‘I overreacted and…yeah.’

Arslan raises an eyebrow, humming in thought before he is nodding in decision. ‘Okay, I will take you to ze court’ouse and…zen to the Guild Master?’

‘Guild Master?’ Harry repeats. 

‘You do want to make a guild?’ Arslan asks for confirmation.

‘To make a guild all official we’d need to visit the Guild Master,’ Dudley explains before confusion can mount any higher since Harry had missed the finer details of this. ‘We can do most of it through the menu but we need to make it official through the Guild Master, right?’ 

Arslan nods. ‘Zorry, I forget what ozzers will and will not know.’

Harry smirks in amusement. ‘That’s fine. A lot of people will know more than me, but that’d be great,’ he responds. ‘Thanks.’ 

‘He ain’t joking either,’ Dudley comments, nudging Harry playfully in the side as he swots him away. ‘He isn’t a gamer.’ 

Arslan looks back to Harry. ‘Zan…I am surprised zat you are playing SAO.’ 

Harry shrugs. ‘De’s been trying to educate me.’ Arslan face saddens but Harry doesn’t want things to stall on that. He opens his menu and pretends not to see how Arslan startles. He’s a bit slow, but he manages to send a friend invite which pops up in front of the frenchman. 

Arslan’s expression softens and something about him eases as he accepts only for another to appear after Harry’s. He accepts Dudley’s too with a small smile. ‘Merci,’ he whispers.

‘Ne nous remercions pas,’ Harry says which he hopes is _don’t thank us._ Dudley stands then, brushing off his trousers which would have been just instinct before he is offering both of them a hand up. Harry takes it and waits for Arslan to accept the help too. Their on their feet in moments and after exchanging a look, begin the rest of the walk into the city. 

Arslan takes another breath as they cross the gate and Harry begins to understand why; the atmosphere is poisonous, it doesn’t take much to tell and Harry wishes they hadn’t had to return so soon. He navigates Arslan between him and Dudley as the city unfurls around them and the tense silence tightens around them.

There weren’t many players around but those who were, were either in shell shock, slumped where they stood or knelt against whatever was behind them. Harry wasn’t if he preferred that to the ones who were openly aggressive. Aggression and fear didn’t make a good mix and it was smart of Arslan to have left with it like this. 

‘Zis way,’ Arslan directed quietly. He kept his head down as he leads them into the centre of the city, past the market and nearing the spawning point that they had all entered with. They get to the foundation unbothered. 

‘Wait, what happened to -’ Dudley begins as they enter what had been the Room of Resurrection. Harry had spent little time in the interior with how crowded it had been but he can tell that there had been a major change in the architecture.

‘Et c’anged after ze “tutorial,”’ Arslan tells them and points to inscribed marble slabs running down the walls. ‘Et ‘as every name. Ze lost ones ‘ave been crossed out.’ 

Wide-eyed, Harry feels vaguely sick and looks over the names - in alphabetical order, and notices quickly the ones that had lines through them, like a person will do to a mistake they had written, like something that shouldn’t be there. He fought not to explode as he swallowed down the rage. There was nothing to do with it in here, he stored it instead, pushed it all down.

‘Et ez ze Monument of Life now,’ Arslan proclaims in disgust. 

‘Of _life_ ,’ Harry hisses as he looks back to the names even as Arslan leads them on. He keeps his head straight, refusing to look around and instead focused on the door they were approaching at the very back of room.

‘I guess et iz meant to be…’ Arslan pauses. ‘Er…ironique?’

‘Ironic,’ Dudley says faintly because the words sound similar enough and Harry was too busy trying not to lose his temper.

‘Ah.’

His nails are not able to cut into his palm and Harry wishes they were. he could control pain in a way that he could not anger. Arslan didn’t want to see and that was fair, sometimes it made things easier when you had to hold yourself together.

They reach the door and Arslan opens it for them. The staircase that greets them is long and minimalistic; very different to the one at the Inn. Dudley pressed his palm against Harry’s back as he stared. He wasn’t very good at just - going into places. The situation wasn’t helping.

But Harry steps forward as Arslan begins to walk down with nary a pause. Dudley was at his back and that made it feel less like he was getting led to his death. That didn’t mean Harry’s heart didn’t ease when they got to the bottom to a grand foyer, all wood and ancient furniture and warm colours. 

Their eyes are drawn to the imposing desk in the corner. ‘Zat iz ze registry desk. Go, money is given or you are sent to ze court,’ Arslan says as he steps away and gestures to a seating area. ‘I will wait for you right ‘ere.’ 

Dudley nods and he’s looking slightly nervous now so Harry has no qualms about following after his cousin. He sends a brief wave to Arslan who flops into one of the large leather chairs. ‘It’ll be fine,’ Harry says quietly. Their footsteps echo and they’re almost too loud for him.

Dudley looks at Harry but there is a stiffness to his walk. 'Yeah, cuz everything’s gone so well,’ Dudley counters. 

Harry feels himself wince but doesn’t get much of a chance to say anything else as they approach the desk. The receptionist was a boy between the age of seven to nine with dark eyes and hair, wearing what looks to be a very expensive three piece suit. The thing Harry took notice of though, was the fact the receptionist did not have a cursor. 

‘Hello,’ Dudley greets awkwardly.

The receptionist glances up at them, head tilting back and smiles shyly. ‘Hello, what can I help you with?’

Dudley hesitates as he glances at Harry. ‘We’re - I’m here to pay a fine.’ 

The receptionist nods without much care. ‘Oh, of course,’ he says as he glances to the paper work in front of him. ‘You’re early.’

Decha blinks. ‘You…know me?’ 

The receptionist’s eyes look back up. ‘I know everyone. It’s my job,’ he affirms. ‘You are early but we can add you to the list for today.’ 

‘Excuse me, but what list are you talking about?’ Harry asks, uncomfortable with the situation and Dudley getting into more trouble with the system. He wasn’t sure how it worked and he didn’t want anything to happen.

‘Mister Decha, while a first time offender, still needs to go before the judge for his punishment. I doubt it will be that severe.’ The receptionist ruffles through pages of blank, short parchment. ‘Go through those double doors,’ he gestures across to the opposite side of the room. ‘There aren’t many players in front of you.’

Dudley’s fists curl in front of him and he nods curtly. ‘Can - Choice come with me?’ 

The receptionist blinks. ‘You do not require a witness for this infraction. You are here to receive the amount of your fine and either pay upfront or set up a payment plan with us. Your server partner can stay in the waiting room.’

‘Server partner?’ Harry parrots in confusion. 

The receptionist’s smile widens. ‘Excuse me, I am able to read your account information. Our system allowed for dual usage. If players have a linked account I can see.’ He looks between them and Harry can’t determine if he is an NPC or a player. He felt unnatural either way. 'You both must be very close, please do not worry about him. Nothing will befall players here.’

Harry doesn’t find much comfort in that, not with everything he can see and interact with created by a maniac. Dudley’s face is scared too but he nods. ‘I’ll be back…later, then.’ Dudley reaches out to clap Harry’s shoulder but he quickly leaves for the double doors before Harry can say much more. 

'I'll see you after,' Harry replies but he can’t watch Dudley go for fear that it could be the last he sees of his cousin and he just can’t think like that. Instead, he further positions himself in front of the receptionist since it is otherwise empty. ‘Have you had many people - er, players come through here?’

The receptionist’s expression falters for the first time since they’d seen each other. ‘…mass panic causes irrational behaviour. We are hoping the crime rates will drop in the following weeks.’ 

Harry finds himself frowning. ‘Is the punishments the same for every…crime? Just fines?’ 

The receptionist’s face settles into something solemn. ‘Punishments the court is able to deliver is limited to our programming, however, the more severe the crime the more severe the punishment.’

A nice way to answer without saying anything at all.

‘And…they all have to come in themselves down here?’ Harry finds himself asking.

‘…yes, but we do have a system in place to track down orange and red players that refuse to return here for their punishment,’ the receptionist replies.

Harry finds himself raising an eyebrow. ‘And what’s that?’ 

‘We have positions available to the players which allow them to act on the court’s behalf.’ 

Harry blinks. ‘…why?’ With what type of person had created SAO, he didn’t expect something like that to be added to the system, it diminished its own power and gave players actual responsibility.

‘Although Aincrad is inhabited with natives, Aincrad was created in order to for players to be self-sufficient,’ the receptionist explains. ‘Starting City has been fitted with a prison for players who prove themselves to be criminals, if this puts you more at ease and Judge Justice and her Court is capable in determining guilty parties.’

‘But,’ Harry prompts as curiosity grows.

The receptionist hesitates and Harry isn’t going to push with this, he doesn’t feel safe enough to but he’ll wait it out. ‘But the natives of Aincrad are not able to otherwise impede players. This is a world of choices, the Court may only stop criminal actions through other player choices.’

That wasn’t what Harry had been expecting. ‘Oh,’ Harry says. 

‘We have classes to aid this if you would like to volunteer,’ the receptionist offers but his tone has changed from overly kind to something more tentative, like he knows Harry will refuse. Maybe he has had this conversation before and it has gone badly.

These - classes sound important, fundamental to the function of the Court. Not everyone will come in for their punishment; a lot had been but it was the beginning and people’s attitudes will become more lax when they discover how little power the Court actually has.

Still. Harry doesn’t want that much control either, nor does he like the thought of working in the confines of something that has trapped him, that will kill him. He shakes his head. ‘No…thank you,’ he says. ‘But…I appreciate the offer,’ _I think_ , he adds silently as he takes a step back from the desk. 

‘Please do return if you change your mind,’ the receptionist says lightly before recommending Harry take a seat in the waiting room as he might be here awhile. 

‘…I’ll do that,’ Harry agrees before stopping short. ‘What’s your name?’ 

Maybe the receptionist is surprised but he answers readily enough. ‘Aoi.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, finally a new upload. It felt read writing for IRL again but here it is. You've got their first guild member (not all of them will by OCs but I hope some of you will understand why the majority will have to be.) Also, apologises for the French accent, I tried hard on it but I'm not great at writing phonetically. (also, languages will be a huge deal in SAO, if I haven't mentioned that. A lot for players are gunna leave bilingual. survival is what survival does.) There is also a reason Arslan's been made a beta. 
> 
> I'll have a character bio for Arslan by the next chapter (no, it shouldn't take as long). Also, I fleshed out out how the prison works and why Kirito would need to go out of his way to arrest the Titan's Hand like he had to in the anime. Hinting at future stuff hahaa
> 
> I doubt this was worth the wait but I hope you enjoy it well enough.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first posting on Archive Of Our Own, mainly because I was too uneasy to but my Fanfiction.Net account hasn't been working...and here I am. I hope this is well received, despite there being no formatting (and if anyone, could do me the favour of explaining how to add Italics, Bold and use lines, I'd be so thankful. I've tried to understand the instructions but I'm far from an IT wiz, and didn't understand it.
> 
> Thank you for reading.  
> OZ


End file.
